Held in Their Sight a River
I won’t talk of your death, instead imagine
the final image you saw through your window, the last
time your wife stroked your cheek, unable to sleep
alongside you but there within reach. The sky
blanched because of November, the fog left the
river, light spent until spring, air beset by
grey cold that replaced the sun for weeks beyond
double-paned glass until your friends surrounded
you with photographs of the early morning mist
rising off the water hiding the rainbow
trout beneath the surface, an image of your
waders drying on your screened-in porch as soon as
the season arrived, there until the trout spell
ended. I understand about your silence
now, how you craved quiet when your empire collapsed, the
sound of the wind in the leaves better than
the blare of honking taxis, the din of voice
and wheel, fresh air instead of smoke or the kind
of foul odor made by poor sanitation,
which we all avoid but sometimes find ourselves
unable to ignore, each city with its
own version of the open sewers found in
countries where people from this one vacation.
Another sort of lifetime passed, not marked by
clocks but by experience. All that was left
you gave away to people who didn’t know
your name, who wouldn’t have recognized you in
the day to day, who never held in their sight
a river and needed no pardon at their end.
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