Linda Aldrich

Reading

A line of sudden text, the fox

startles out from under the fence

and crosses the field, her tracks

fast-filling with snow.

A fox is never a full sentence.

I grasp after her for meaning

like dreams that disintegrate.

If I knew she was coming,

would I see her better

sidelong, tell her better slant?

Iris brought messages from the gods

over bright-colored bridges,

the Greek word for rainbow,

for the petalled flowers our eyes

use to read the world, yet what

can be said for our brokenness,

the numbed drum of so many

flaccid hearts?

Even with a good seat in the zone

of totality, I could see through my

glasses only darkly as the moon

threw everything it had over the sun

and still couldn’t contain its powerful

explosion beyond all margins. Such

a fiery display, it caught us up short,

stopped the birds from singing,

stunned us into chilled silence.

I think of you, Mr. Tanaka, looking up

from your garden in Nagasaki

that morning. For a split second,

did you think the sun was falling

as your flowers scorched and

the heat wave melted your skin?

How could you know that splitting

atoms was beyond our reach, there

would be no going back, that we’d

forever live dumb and partial lives?

Linda Aldrich has written three collections of poetry, the most recent is entitled Ballast (2021). Linda was the Portland Poet Laureate from 2018 to 2021. She received the 2023 Maine Poetry Award for short works.

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