It's True

the dead have left us, but we have

not left them. They are tired of their toys

stone, cloud, water. They want something

more-to touch a Popsicle melting, to feel

the heat on their faces, or to hold

for a moment the trout's shivering, wreckless

glass, a present of the flesh

forgotten while the pillows of their prior sleep

move clouds, or centuries turn like pages

around their motionless hands. We'd like to speak

to them, but the graphs of our words

have long since become bridges of ash

dependent on winds to transport us

to some longing where, cloud-built and yearning

to be filled with a light. But we find them

again in the smell of cut grass, and in

things first seen-the burning stars, from which we,

fragile, hang featherweight tons of memory.

MARK IRWIN'S fourth collection, White City, recently appeared from BOA. He won the 2000 James Wright Award for Poetry and is currently a Visiting Writer at the University of Nevada/Las Vegas.

Copyright World Poetry, Incorporated Mar/Apr 2001
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