Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
Michael CadnumApril 22, 2021

                   My memory
plus my travels add up
to you, with your lovely
laugh, and your stewardship of
the field from the highway to the creek—
even the crows know you’re here.
The bare agates of the stream-bed are
as smooth as eyes

                                    in a land
I cannot know. I am a microdot,
the letter between A and B, the number
between zero and emptiness.

The snake is a word unwriting itself.
The killdeer flies by nearly falling.
But I am absent. What did I just say?

Silence multiplied by silence equals
absolute peace over
and over, a treasury of white noise.
Your clothing keeps the memory
of your limbs. The glove keeps the shape

of your grip. What was I keeping
when you reached your hand
to my not-yet? This is where I end.

It’s true, you dreaded the legend,
alive without living. Did I ask
a question? The drought has
no feelings, but the green

grass around the sprinkler head thrives.
I am this fresh quiet,
this door latch, this welcome mat,
the sowbug like a fossil ending everything.
And beginning. I’m home.

The latest from america

The 12 women whose feet were washed by Pope Francis included women from Italy, Bulgaria, Nigeria, Ukraine, Russia, Peru, Venezuela and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
"We, the members of the Society of Jesus, continue to be lifted up in prayer, in lament, in protest at the death and destruction that continue to reign in Gaza and other territories in Israel/Palestine, spilling over into the surrounding countries of the Middle East."
The Society of JesusMarch 28, 2024
A child wounded in an I.D.F. bombardment is brought to Al Aqsa hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, on March 25. (AP Photo/Ismael abu dayyah)
While some children have been evacuated from conflict, more than 1.1 million children in Gaza and 3.7 million in Haiti have been left behind to face the rampaging adult world around them.
Kevin ClarkeMarch 28, 2024
Easter will not be postponed this year. It will not wait until the war is over. It is precisely now, in our darkest hour, that resurrection finds us.
Stephanie SaldañaMarch 28, 2024