Sean Rys
ABLATION
ankle-deep in orchard grass, straw hat pulled low
swallowed light
like the stamens of unopened flowers
where the plane crashed one night in the berry field
seat cushions, fuselage, a lone survivor
stumbling off through the field rows
my daddy told me, he was no liar
how to enter and how to erase myself
from history, a vanishing
like dust lifts from the undersides
of leaves, will it kill you
to wait another hour for arms
to remember your falling, wire bulb in the barn rafters
you climbed on my shoulders
looked out through motheaten window slats
bricklayers bent over their work like felled trees
in the face of oncoming light, do you believe
past lives return, walking backwards
to find someone we loved
still standing there, a brutalized moon
all of childhood dragging its witnesses
back to sleep, fallen blossoms
arranged in your dutch braid, outside in a nightgown
alive and haunted
a campfire chewing the trees down to ash
when the weather turns ominous
and our shadows try to pretend
they belong to us
