D. Nurkse

Summertime

When we tried to blast free of earth’s pull,
whirling debris hammered us in near space-–
a toaster, a blender, spare parts to satellites,
Father’s putting iron, Baby’s bronze shoe--
we had to turn back with a breached hull
and touch down on the charred launch pad
where the brass band, that had plodded to see us off,
welcomed us with sardonic oompahs: no Mars,
no Venus, no moons of Jupiter: we would grow old
to “Summertime” on a dented tuba, self-hating trumpet,
trombone uncoiling like a mantis, each reprise
the last, in the flickering light of storms.

The Lake Behind The Branches

The suicides were walking sideways
on their half-lit screen porch
cradling brimful mint juleps
and frowning-–must not spill.
One tiny umbrella was soaked.
It was almost evening, the pale crests
of the pines seemed long ago
but the paths of the ants were dark.
Had they killed themselves for sexual peace?
Because the mountain ash kept wavering?
I would have asked them, but all that summer
I felt like someone who just woke-–
in a moment everything will be obvious:
the meaning of the faces, the shadow craning
behind their backs like a scrupulous tutor,
the faint clear bell that must come
from across deep water, from an island
or a ship. Anika, since I am not dead,
I can’t stop counting, though the sum
is just nightfall, nakedness, the fat bee
zooming freely through the golden wisps.

Return To The Capital

They imagined they would sleep together,
then they slept together-–
they thought to rest afterwards,
arm in arm, listening to rain,
so they rested, but it snowed,
they woke in silence
(the silence woke them),
they had not imagined the pain
of dressing, sorting clothes
back into male and female--
in the mirror, instead of a face,
they saw two reflections:
if this is happiness,
how shall we leave it,
if this is grief, how to enter it,
if this is just a rented room,
where are the doors, the stairs,
the streets, the endless city.

Acknowledgments:
Summertime originally appeared in The Atlantic Monthly;
The Lake Behind the Branches originally appeared in Tin House;
Return to the Capital originally appeared in The Manhattan Review.