The holiday / of catastrophe …
7
The holiday
of catastrophe
with friends
from crestfallen
adulthoods re-
convening
to say love
you maybe for
the first or
last time with
such bounded cheer
Their bouquets
accumulate
already sweetly
decaying She sobs
into the pulse
in my neck when
they are gone The young
invite our envy
as the old
deserve it like
her mother resting
in our vacant
marriage bed and
her father hiding
behind veils
of cigar smoke while
the babe leaps
barefoot stone
to stone
62
What else
can the babe
apprehend
as she fondles
the bubo
of my port
asking When
will it heal
away
Away away
she used to sing
as I strolled her
beneath the moon
home to bath
and sleep
Shoulder of snow
ringlet wound
round my finger
I will give all
to keep her
so
83
In the vision
our child is
a woman
gazing across
a cozy table
at me
some locale
holy to us
like Carmel
sometime sleepy
like mid-
afternoon in this
courtyard with leaves
glinting the season
shouldn’t matter
but it does
matter that
I am being
looked after
with quizzical
aggravation and
affection
I am certain
I am pleased
she contains
our features
commingling
her hair like
her mother’s
copper curling
like my hair
used to like
our allusive
conversation
foundering on
the mundane
Her mother
with any luck is
running late
Our daughter
wears a dress of
Marian blue
a healer
from birth
she is why
we are here
simply sharing
a meal
©2021 by Dan O’Brien. Excerpted from Our Cancers (Acre Books). Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved. Dan O’Brien is the author of three previous poetry collections and the recipient of many playwriting honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and two PEN America Awards. His essay collection A Story That Happens: On Playwriting, Childhood, & Other Traumas was published in 2021. He has served on the faculty of the Sewanee Writers’ Conference for more than a decade.
Tagged: Book Excerpt, Poetry
