On the island, you have at least
Dostoyevsky, the Bible,
and penguins, a trembling sea
of penguins, an ice-floe of waddle,
alert in their water of thoughts.
It is an island of flat-footed
parents and children
caressing each other with their
noses, playing at likeness and un-
likeness. They angle across
the ice the way I do across this
page, dear one, a little wavery
from the tears in my eyes.
Things will change, I write
to you. Look at the way your grief’s
in motion already, a little island
of sociability. I am awkward
writing it, but I keep hoping to
build momentum, get the words
to start blackening the shoreline.
And don’t you have
the classics, sort of a general
all cocking their heads as if the
air were magnetized? You could
watch the way they try to catch
which sounds they should
turn to, in the circus of sounds.