Passage
And there was evening, humid
with lightning, when my father
fell to the earth like summer hail,
scattered. I gathered
my mother, we threw in
a handful of pebbles. And
there was morning, bitterly.
There was evening news
bluing walls, violet morning
on thunderheads, and the evening
when morning
would never again light our bodies in bed.
Morning caravans, headlights,
evening. A long caravan of evenings. Then
there was only me, morning. Awake in a room
in a building vast with rooms. Everyone
evening. Everyone morning. And God
had finished all the work he had been doing—
babies, honeybees, spreadsheets, winter
mornings. I said,
I will not stop here, evening. I’ll see you
in the morning.
Copyright © 2015 by Thomas Dooley. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 10, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.
“In Genesis, the phrase ‘and there was evening, and there was morning’ is incanted after each day of creation. I looked at those markers in my own life, how the ‘long caravan’ of mornings and evenings has brought wild creation, but also sudden and altering loss. How can a body endure the events of change and still get up in the morning?”
—Thomas Dooley
Thomas Dooley
Thomas Dooley is the author of Trespass (Harper Perennial, 2014). He is artistic director of Emotive Fruition, a theater collective of actors and poets in New York. He lives in Brooklyn.