Dispatch #26
Keepsake
This poem originally appeared in Tablet. Thank you to the kind editors over there.
Keepsake
The friend who betrayed
me, I hold no malice
toward him, remembering when
we drove the backroads
of Western Massachusetts,
and wild turkeys, barely lit by what red
remained of a sunset, crossed the road
and we stopped to let them pass.
We stopped talking, after hours
of talk, and watched those ghosts,
those turkey-shaped shadows,
slowly cross a narrow road
into woods where it was already night.
it's nice when we can keep something from a relationship that has hurt us instead of throwing it all out. nice reminder that these moments make up our souls and stand alone, separate from the hurt.
if i were a poet, i could say how quietly powerful this is. Reminds me of Czesław Miłosz, but you, and American.