Kenneth Roger Smith
Apr. 14, 1944 - Oct. 7, 2007
HERE AND THERE, OCTOBER 7, 8:18 PM
At 8:18 in the evening the mockingbird's cry began as an echo
of the only thing it wanted to remember. At 8:18 the windows hushed,
the breath whittled down to the only thing it knew. You can peel
away the heart layer by layer, but what remains is heart. I think
the hawks you saw once crossing the road in front of you were
practicing for that evening, leaving tracks on the air you knew
to follow. You once said that ash makes the richest soil, that we are
here to leave an extra syllable on anyone's tongue, that sometimes
a fish strikes before you have ever cast a line. At 8:18, the day before,
I watched tiny perch flipping across the surface of Lake Michigan
as if they were remembering a time they could fly. You'd have said
they had a quarrel with the sky. You'd have said they were warning
of a storm that had started ages before any of us were here.
It was a storm you must have seen flowering under the stars
of your Arizona desert. The roadrunners there, you once said, were
rushing to discover the short lives they didn't know they had.
At 8:18 that evening the mockingbird was waiting for the darkness
to hold its nest in its hand. I remember the last things you said
from your hospital room phone, words that seemed to scratch
the sky with hope the way a prisoner etches his name on the wall,
a man who can barely see, outside, the neon sign with all but one letter
missing. Maybe we are all held under the shadow of a wing too
huge to grasp. Fish swim while sleeping, you said, we believe
in stars we never see, dots and lines on a screen that stand for
who we are. At 8:18 that evening a moth tested the mirrored
reflections in the room as if he were looking for a light that was true.
The heart circles back on itself like a man wandering in the desert.
At 8:18 that evening the sun had just set hesitantly. There was
a phone ringing reluctantly, there was the sound of a rescue copter
whose blades could lift the dust from the earth. There is the desert flower
that rises from that dust, the palo verde tree that thrives on drought,
stars that return each night to finish what they began. There is, you said,
a part of us that remains like the water stored for drought in a saguaro
cactus. And there are your words that still hide inside these words.
There are those invisible galaxies that continue to pull us towards them.
-- Richard Jackson
At 8:18 in the evening the mockingbird's cry began as an echo
of the only thing it wanted to remember. At 8:18 the windows hushed,
the breath whittled down to the only thing it knew. You can peel
away the heart layer by layer, but what remains is heart. I think
the hawks you saw once crossing the road in front of you were
practicing for that evening, leaving tracks on the air you knew
to follow. You once said that ash makes the richest soil, that we are
here to leave an extra syllable on anyone's tongue, that sometimes
a fish strikes before you have ever cast a line. At 8:18, the day before,
I watched tiny perch flipping across the surface of Lake Michigan
as if they were remembering a time they could fly. You'd have said
they had a quarrel with the sky. You'd have said they were warning
of a storm that had started ages before any of us were here.
It was a storm you must have seen flowering under the stars
of your Arizona desert. The roadrunners there, you once said, were
rushing to discover the short lives they didn't know they had.
At 8:18 that evening the mockingbird was waiting for the darkness
to hold its nest in its hand. I remember the last things you said
from your hospital room phone, words that seemed to scratch
the sky with hope the way a prisoner etches his name on the wall,
a man who can barely see, outside, the neon sign with all but one letter
missing. Maybe we are all held under the shadow of a wing too
huge to grasp. Fish swim while sleeping, you said, we believe
in stars we never see, dots and lines on a screen that stand for
who we are. At 8:18 that evening a moth tested the mirrored
reflections in the room as if he were looking for a light that was true.
The heart circles back on itself like a man wandering in the desert.
At 8:18 that evening the sun had just set hesitantly. There was
a phone ringing reluctantly, there was the sound of a rescue copter
whose blades could lift the dust from the earth. There is the desert flower
that rises from that dust, the palo verde tree that thrives on drought,
stars that return each night to finish what they began. There is, you said,
a part of us that remains like the water stored for drought in a saguaro
cactus. And there are your words that still hide inside these words.
There are those invisible galaxies that continue to pull us towards them.
for Ken Smith
-- Richard Jackson