*
It's the rope you carry from a cemetery
with the dead holding on as if the knot
would keep its shadow in place
let no one lift it from the ground
to blacken their teeth not to forget
why night became a night
covered the Earth and for the first time
as the word given it by the dying
who need certainty, who lose their way
when separated from each other, want
something to hold that is not s stone
would never let go their hand.
*
You reach for December, rip the page off
letting it lay crumpled on the wooden floor
side by side the days, hours, minutes
still shaking from the final week you tried
to bring them back to life as tears
̶ this calendar can no longer hide your grief
gives way from under the great weight
that turns snow to stone where each death
stays covered with a night
that never leaves the room except as cracks
loosened by just standing in front a wall
making do with what is left to let go.
*
Where this scaffolding ends
the emptiness faces a sea
rests on waves that long ago
dried as one breeze more
still smelling from salt
and thee lift-off that's now
impossible from the street below
though you rely on trees
as if for the last time each leaf
would soar branch to branch
see everything from above
̶ you reach for the ground
the way a roof is deserted
can go no further, relies
on corners and the afternoon
to fill the sky with its light
from tears trying to learn
how to dry, become pillars
on which everything is built
as nights that spill out
the breathing you no longer need.
Bionote
Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Forge, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His most recent collection is The Family of Man Poems published by Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library, 2021. For more information including free e-books and his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at simonperchik.com . To view one of his interviews please follow this linkhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSK774rtfx8
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