What remained
You are not water. You are not wine. You are not altar bread broken. No, not soil for seed. Not sun for bee and bloom. Not light in darkness. You are not the cosmos or atom dense core. Not nexus, focus, locus. Turn the corner,
pivot.
Walk till first light. Squint. Eat frog, toad, tadpole against her governance. Dance with Lear’s foul fiend. Wrestle with Job’s God. Drink from standing water. Face the blank, bleak wall and trample her decrees. Hope is hard as a kernel, indigestible. Swallow. You were in control until the end and beyond. Flame and ash. No undertaker for you. You ended anyway in the dirt in an urn with graveyard grass over what remained. And the scars. Patrick T. Reardon is the author of eight books, including “Requiem for David.” His poetry has appeared in Eclectica, Esthetic Apostle, Ground Fresh Thursday, Literary Orphans, Rhino, Spank the Carp and Under a Warm Green Linden. His poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2016 and 2017. His novella Babe was short-listed by Stewart O’Nan for the annual Faulkner-Wisdom Contest of the Faulkner Society.
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