photo: steve tomasko
Like This
by Jeanie Tomasko
It might have been like this: a rampant swath
of fire—or like a heron's rise, that blue
and slow desire. The way a thought will sift
through time. A flower's life: a language you
have learned and left behind. Or this: a kiss.
Whatever was lives on somewhere. Sometimes
her name will slip into my sleep—like this:
the shiver of a bird before it flies,
the faintest musk of plum leaves on the skin—
and bring with it the only day I touched
her hair. Like this: an angel’s wing. But in
what world was that? Too soon the heart adjusts
like some dark bird who cannot trust the light
whose wing-tucked song forever haunts the night.
~ first published in The Midwest Quarterly
by Jeanie Tomasko
It might have been like this: a rampant swath
of fire—or like a heron's rise, that blue
and slow desire. The way a thought will sift
through time. A flower's life: a language you
have learned and left behind. Or this: a kiss.
Whatever was lives on somewhere. Sometimes
her name will slip into my sleep—like this:
the shiver of a bird before it flies,
the faintest musk of plum leaves on the skin—
and bring with it the only day I touched
her hair. Like this: an angel’s wing. But in
what world was that? Too soon the heart adjusts
like some dark bird who cannot trust the light
whose wing-tucked song forever haunts the night.
~ first published in The Midwest Quarterly
