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.