SIMON PERCHIK

Five Poems

*
Even so, there's just one moon left
where the river narrowed, lets you walk alone
word by word along an old love song

not yet icing over — lovers prepare for this
sit side by side on some wooden bench
and in winter not that long after

when their lips crack open from words
where kisses should be, taking root mid-air
as mountains — you carry this height

on your shoulders, bending over
the way water is taught to fall, break apart
for snow, fill the sky with seeds

louder and louder growing distances
it learned from your arms spread out
empty as far as they remember

being two, held close by grassland
that's now an overgrown ditch
between one breath and another.

 

*
Just one headstone — a poor catch
though the fence every few hours or so
is sprayed with a scent that's dried

by the whistle from some train
coming too close for no reason at all
except to cover the rails with a sea

already picked clean so you can hear
it's time and when it's not, has you wait
while the cross-ties loosen the ground

for the splash lowered from a distance
long ago cast off as shoreline
then left to crumble — even from here

you can watch the way all stones still keep
to themselves the silence you need
for a single death so far from the others.

 

 
*
These bricks still warm the sky
the way one night more than the others
is melted down for mist

where a river should be
and though your eyes are closed
you carry them in your arms

as if one hand is always heavier
would pull you into the turn
making room for one constellation more

— row by row you are building
a chimney though the Earth stands by
watching it tilt, pour out you dead

as stars, face up to begin and end
behind a wall, hiding the sky
for a long time now smelling from smoke.

 

 
*
Behind its back a bird
is waiting for the tree to sing
has heard it all before

though lovers are always in a hurry
let just their initials heat the nest
while one by one the leaves breathe out

become a chorus, gathering around
and on the same afternoon each year
can be heard as an enchantment

where she is alive again
and in some ancient language
traces how they both came here

and stayed — it's the usual scar
keeps track, knows when to start
needs time till everything that flies

can hear where love goes, holding on
the way your shadow remembers
is climbing back up as in forever.

 

 
*
What's left is the  moon, still alive
inside these pebbles — barefoot, you can see
the battle took place at night

and though the sun never saw it coming
lovers still lower their eyes
and count by twos the way all darkness

smells from the night it once was
still weeps when breaking apart
as shadows from wandering off.

 

 

 

 

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