Poem: Peek-A-Boo

 

 

~For Danny & Ethan

That one time we learned if we stopped seeing

something—it was really gone.

Then that other time when we discover that was a lie.

Let me teach you peek-a-boo

cover your eyes

I’m gone.

Uncover

I’m back.

How strange to be gone in a minute!  A man signs a shovel

and so he digs, hangs a shingle, rolls up sleeves

There is work to do

Work turns into writing a name for a day

It is his name all over the page

It always will be.

Someone

is having a birthday and someone is getting married

somewhere someone is telling a joke, somewhere

Danny is leaving my town, my coast

Danny, the man who works,

writes his name on the page

When I require some heavenly music,

which even now I do, I will sing his song and look to the east

This pencil I used to write his poem

I’ll break in half and plant at either side of the path

One side will grow strength the other kindness

In the morning, not any time, but the purple-sky time

when dark retreats into peek and before a sun lifts boo over the Cascades

I’ll visit the trees and declare their positions right and true

Good bye and Good luck my poet brother!

Treat them well New Hampshire

or the gods of the west will visit you!

 

by Shannon Laws | July 20, 2015  |  With a wink to Ted Berrigan’s “A Final Sonnet”