Tuesday poem #324 : Rob Winger : 19/85 (LETTER FOR TWO, LOST)

for Alicia and Eldon

1.

Dear friends, have I given you October?
How the deepest lakes fill with blue?
Or the tired hills turn to vinyl sleeves?
You’ve seen it before, I know.

But still. It’s here.



2.

They cut the earth for you
into tight, crisp cubes.
Chestnut horses by the pond, that breeze.
From here, you can still see

where the old ports met
their muddy banks, cleaved
Ecclesiastes into bread.
Some of that was yours. Remember?



3.

I’ve chosen lines for your mother.
The ones with cracks that let the light on in.
They tack them up beside your pictures,
eternally looping on the closed-circuit TV.

There’s nothing smart to say



4.

Out in the field, you already knew that.
We all get basement cake
when the service finally ends,
you said. Why not share the recipe?



5.

Along the highway, they’ve finally
patched the busted bridge.
It holds my car above
a tiny creek
filled with microscopic things
already preparing for winter.

We're all riding the brake.



Rob Winger's first book, Muybridge's Horse, lost some of Canada's most prestigious literary awards. He's also the author of The Chimney Stone and, most recently, Old Hat. Rob lives in the hills northeast of Toronto, where he teaches at Trent University.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan