Our Chaucer, I think, would have sighed.
He would have assured us, shaking his sorrowful head,
That day the solar system married us
Whether we knew it or not
Now that we spent an afternoon with Crow.
Now in the breadth of highway between us.
Now after your presented death and my
Wide like a canyon, like the end
Of God’s whip, I can appreciate
Our limestone. Parched. How quickly
We pressed and built up. How quickly
We could wear. And don’t. I said
I love you
For your daughter, for your poems
Of home and mothers, dire wolves
And quiet words. I loved you
Even for the afternoon you called me,
Voice of a cornered deer, lost, mouth wide
And gaping fear in the cornfield.
I was there
More than a thousand miles away.
More than a crow. More than
I knew I loved you,
When the cops showed up,
When she said ‘drop it, drop it right now!’
And you held onto the knife,
Pressed it to your pale neck and said
I love you.
It was more then
And it is more now. The steady
Progression of time.
The crow calling both of us
To love again.
Rhiannon Thorne’s work has appeared/is forthcoming most recently in Foundling Review, Midwest Quarterly, Words Dance, and The Doctor TJ Eckleburg Review. She edits the online publication cahoodaloodaling and may be reached at rhiannonthorne.com.
Categories: LGBTQ+, Poetry, Themed
Tags: e-zine, ezine, For Kate Always, hyperbole, LGBTQ+, longing, melancholy, melancholy hyperbole, new, poem, poet, poetry, poets, Rhiannon Thorne, writing
Melancholy Hyperbole 