Reckoning
by Kevin Le
Certainty, do you see my uncertainty?
Which way was I then headed?
When did I ever need your guidance?
What was fixed, unmoved on the highway
closed in on the frosted leaves, more like silver-quick
in lake water, than the air pervasive:
Was it a point of brilliance? Or its afterimage?
The windshield darkened. I opened the door.
With clusters of ice, an antler of wood
pointed the road that flitted, so as to fade
into another world, to another world:
Evening. The alabaster landscape
exploded into blossoms.
Radiance was to the dark
like a game of good guys and bad guys.
Abandon the night.
I arrived on your street,
where every path converged
to the knob of your door.
In the dark I plunged into your bedroom.
How your flesh wrapped your breath,
like a frame holding a map—
but how breath escaped our mouths,
like wood burst into buds,
wood of a grafted tree, of apples, apricots,
plums, peaches, and cherries.
Memory. You napped beneath the arbor,
eyes sealed in sunlight, swing cradling
you, butterflies haunting. The piano.
Its grace note, a note left.
Start over.
Never play the ending.
Or: measures and measures of eighth notes
against the timpani of rain.
The keys glittered.
Note of silence. On broken envelopes, I composed.
The title: Prelude. Prelude to what?
There was no piece for it to open.
Melodies rustled in the tall grass,
singing, please, I need you,
but crying to be resolved.
You left, which is different from saying
you were gone. You were drafted.
Soldier fallen in crossfire,
and warrior risen from ice. Good guys. Bad guys.
Forget this. Outdoors, the blossoms—
pink, white, purple,
in pairs, rippling, shimmered
in the air, suspended, as though in time.
You, the cherry smell.
Beat my heart like the tree.
Did you really expect anything
but the tree to wither?
On a car on which birches reflected,
on the interstate merging into void,
I saw myself, streak of radiance.
Look at you, beloved! You’re
anxiety at the front door.
So tall, you said. The bed lamp
the imitation sun. Pulsating.