SIMON PERCHIK

Five Poems

*
That seagulls would grieve for you, circle down
as cries still wet, almost water, making the sky
look for a place not asking for more salt –mourn

the way a whitewashed wall is handed over
though a boy in sleeves is waiting nearby
with his initials around someone no longer there

–stone by stone it will come back and she
by the worn-down buttons on her blouse
that fell open to point a finger at the hole in the air.

 

*
As if these gravestones were once a forest
between each there's still the breeze
from wood and leaves and winter

though under your fingertips the initials
warm, are already stretching out
the way a beginner tree wants to be lit

then at its highest even in the cold
grows a small stone that will ripen
and stay red for the arrow

carved around two rivers and the heart
brought closer, smelling from the caress
that is not a blouse or its ashes.

 

*
Though the bed died during the night
this sheet is reaching for flowers
still warm from the last time they saw daylight

as one more hole in the Earth
–it's for them you heat the room
with wood each morning heavier
breathing in the way you fill your arms
with sores no longer holding on
–this bed was left to die in the open

as the space between two pillows
that grieves with the ancient scent
cooling your lips among the ashes.

 

*
A spotless avalanche, minutes old
already bathed the way this rope
begins as rain then ponds

then oceans slowly covered with masts
from hard tall ships –you dead
still cling to the rocks and what's left

when mourners leave too close to each other
–you stretch out though your arms
are now the endless undergrowth

half tied to shadows, half your slow descent
as if the sky was never enough, comes by
weaker and weaker till your breath

becomes weightless –say it! what you hear
is one stone telling the others who it loves
what it began so late in the afternoon.

 

*
It was a birthday gift, sent alone
the day before your heart leaves
for a place that's safer –a book

on travel, what to listen for, by yourself
in walls that let you look back
while your shadow is taken away

–it's too soon! the ribbon is still splendid
will spend the night the way a sailor
learns to tie huge sails between each arm

stretch out, not yet rope, clinging to a sea
from a boat that's lost, is closing
while you embrace the dark gray pages.

 

 

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