David Brendan Hopes

Before the Flight

 

You think this time the rain will not close the airports,
nor the thunders stack the planes like storks
above the sheltering roosts.
The winds will bear. The gray waves
will pass without incident far under.
You will arrive amid the clamor of reuniting families.
The accommodations will be good enough.
You will have the experiences you anticipated,
along with others which the universe provides
toward its merry and imponderable ends.
 
You will forget the face you seek on the strade
must be, by now, worn and furrowed as your own.
A grandson, maybe, passing under the orange trees,
launching those missiles of remembrance,
his face, his arch of brow--not him.
You don’t expect to wonder if you’d lived too long.
You’ll recall November roses sprung up
in the unnatural gardens and doomed on all sides
when the real night eddied backward with its ice.
That flawless camembert
is history. Aim for someplace new.

 

Swans gather in the public waterways.
The bars will be full of singing.
The little town at the river’s mouth will seem,
in an hour, as intimate as your mother’s garden.
Perhaps it was what she was remembering
when she began to dig.
Try not to tear up thinking of that. Waste of time.
Continue packing.
Divide your resources and keep half hidden.
Remember to provide for all weathers.

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