A True Story in August Air

 

A True Story in Cool August Air:

not the aubade I wanted to write

 --for E.L.

 

It is not yet dawn.
I wake up crying
and wander outside
in the near darkness.
I want this to be your aubade,
a morning song leaving
cool lips in the sunrise.
But under a porch light
where no moths gather,
a deep seated saudade falls
like a curtain over the scene,
this longing in your absence
a melancholy I fear will not end.
I can’t escape the possibility
it was meant to end this way,
that I was meant to stay alone,
that I did something
to make you disappear
this time never to return.
Or that I should have showed up
at your house and
taken you in my arms,
kissed each rugged worn finger
that night you were sick
from heat exhaustion
or that night you said you
were fine but your thoughts
really weren’t.
I’m supposed to write a happy
ending where I walk out of here
resolved to move on but when I
Trust God and Wait
what am I waiting for? Dunno, but how
is certain: slowly. I’ve always
run head-on and fully towards
what I loved too far and too fast,
and I fear that’s what happened
here. Your hands never got enough
attention. I just wanted to hold them.
Now they’re on the list of what I’ve
lost. Over-loved and lost, but how
do you measure love? I love you
more abundantly than the tomatoes
in my garden this year; I love you
more serendipitously than the
volunteer trees I’ve gathered
in pots and around the yard for you
that you may never come retrieve;
my love for you is taller than the
sunflowers bending over my shed
in the backyard, their brown and yellow
faces watching me now with a
certain sorrow. They must be
thinking, poor human.
I only wanted to be your friend.
When will there be a time I
cease thinking of you? Perhaps when
I look out at the porch light,
see the moths again, and think,
so this is the famous happiness
I’ve heard so much about.

by Tansy Julie the Soaring Eagle Paschold

8.13.24

after Bob Hicok’s “True Story”