by Terry L. Kennedy
excerpted from What the Light Leaves Hidden
●
It matters: the difference between noticing
a muskrat, its barely visible wake, versus
the quick-ripple of the water snake on the otherwise
flat surface of the river’s horizon.
In other words, it could not be ignored,
the difference, nor could its implications:
I was frightened as should be expected.
Without fear, what is love? Without
love, for that matter, what do we
notice? The smallest things, those we live on
inside of, are always, without fail,
awaiting re-discovery. They are like
small children lost in a game of hide-n-seek;
which is to say, with the desire to be found
and, therefore, not hiding at all, not really.
A way to practice loss, you called it.
Then, I agreed. But now, I see differently,
see transformation—or the idea of it: how an exercise
becomes habit, becomes, eventually, such
an integral part of something larger, it ceases
to be itself; the way memory, over time, becomes
more real than the experience recollected: that day
on the river, I wish you hadn’t looked at me the way
you did: like someone saying,
This is going to hurt. It’s too late to avoid it.
●
You told me something once
about life, how to live it; or
rather, I saw it, one afternoon,
in your eyes. I see now
there’s no easy way out
of this. Every July, drought
or not, the hydrangeas push out
their lacy blooms; and the blooms,
having opened to their fullest, hang their heads—
not in shame of their newly formed bodies;
exhaustion maybe; or thankfulness.
But what do hydrangeas know of thanks?
And this is not that kind of poem;
not this morning. This morning,
as if overnight, though, of course,
it is never the case, the spring
at the corner of the yard is gushing
clear, cold, humming its way
to the river; and the river, for today, is not
a metaphor of life, its passing; is just a river;
doing a river’s work, singing a river’s song.
Let’s leave it at that.
From What the Light Leaves Hidden by Terry L. Kennedy. Copyright ©2023. Reprinted with the permission of Unicorn Press.
Terry L. Kennedy is the author of the poetry collections What the Light Leaves Hidden and New River Breakdown. His work appears in a variety of literary magazines and anthologies including Cave Wall, Southern Review, and You Are River: Literature Inspired by the North Carolina Museum of Art. He currently serves as the Director of Creative Writing at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro where he edits The Greensboro Review.