Darkening, Brightening by Carl Phillips

Darkening, Brightening 

        

Listening's not enough, you've gotta watch them, that way they feel

less lonely. Him singing. Maybe I'm singing it. Latest hunch:

it's been too late, forever. Raft of sunset. Swing

of the mind like a fist, swinging—rough here, here

more delicate, as if undecided: to mean no harm, or

to not especially,

                            just now, be looking for it. The raft

noticeably less steady here, where the water this

otherwise silence most resembles has turned abruptly still:

braid-less, the water. Like remembering the words themselves—

Swans rowing at nightfall across a sky filled with snow, and

Very little we wouldn't have done for what we thought

was power—but not

                                  who said them. The breeze

notwithstanding. The usual first moths appearing,

moth-like, flower-like, like those flowers from childhood

we used to call Strip Heaven, a game, something someone

played , once. The way I'm figuring it, the half-life's

                                                                                    not a half-life,

when it's all you've known, he says, watching me

watch back. The sound of two bucks locking antlers. Sound

of luck—shadow-luck—when, unexpectedly, it seems

        there's been

some mistake. I hate the word unbearable. All this talk about

trust coming always down, after much struggling, to a

        drowned body:

easily lost; not irretrievable—Very well, then. Drag the lake.