Poetry by Sal Christ
—
On It, We Ride
On your silence
and mine
we ride.
Clouds like sails
swelling,
whirling with weight,
flitting among the swish swish
of the autumn trees and their
sun-licked leaves all
blood-spattered and orange
and death barren yet.
And we walked
upon these leaves not
holding our weight
but breaking beneath it
the way my heart
breaks beneath
your silence.
And Chicago seems
a long, far ways away
to travel to or to love
or to hope for both
in the hours that stack
thinly around those
walks about autumn’s
trees.
And when you left me
in summer’s last wisps
and wrote
love letters at
four-in-the-morning,
I wanted
more than perhaps
you could
give
and
more than space
could promise.
And if a wharf the wind
would provide
I’d launch myself off it
as the clouds split
their seams
for higher ground
and I’d hope
you’d follow me
all the way down,
but now /
now is all that’s left
beneath the swell of sky
and autumn leaves
not yet bereft,
so on your silence
and on mine,
we ride.
—
Always in all ways: a lament
The early-evening darkness still
battles with the afternoon sun
casting shadows like fingers
round the form of the
beloved one
The dead plant entrails
hang silent against
the terracotta pot
And your memory,
always your memory,
all ways here and all ways part
And suddenly the sun’s
unwell departure
catches and chases the evening
from its favorite corners
Until the evening shall
have its way
and cast all things
in your memory and mine
into its heart
Your memory cast
and hung like
a mirror reflecting
a past from which
I forever in all ways
depart.
—
Sal Christ is a writer living in Denver.
—
Featured Image photograph by E.B. Bartels, www.ebbartels.com.
