The very word is, if
you ask me, like a horn –
fog, French, krumm, cor
anglais, or car – depending on the timbre
and accent of its native loss.
It’s never like the bell
that tolled Keats back to life the night
he nearly OD’ed on The Nightingale.
Anyway, what odds? It tolls
for him but honks for me, a closed nasal
existential echo, not quite
recovered from that nasty cold.
Forlorn:
the bare unfaeried self re-pots us
in our deaths as into humus.
Not lonely, twanging of teen angst
and Nashville. Not solitary,
with its would-be-Thomas-Merton air
of being the best graduate student He
has supervised in eras.
Forlorn:
it is 2:45 a.m.
again. Noises, some like itch,
some like scratch, surround the cabin.
One rises in a hiss
(snake? bird? cat?) over
and over until I’m up, irascible,
up and out, dammit, with the flashlight
As though whatever it is
started to say “curse” then
switched to “kiss,”
then “ship.” The flashlight poking tunnels
into the dark, selecting arty angles
through the foliage, and finds them – there,
huddled on a branch, two grey lumps,
staring down the beam like fluffy
wide-eyed monks. Owlets,
I’m guessing barred, out of the nest
but not yet fledged, still
begging for food from the ruthless mother,
who is elsewhere.
Darkling, I listen,
switching off the spot. The hiss
of hunger, separation, and – to insert
a personal note – sleeplessness. Ksship:
how to translate that?
Forlorn, of course,
the very word.