Mark B. Derr
THE HOUR BEFORE MIDNIGHT
What is left of this day and what do I want of it–
the clarity of vision to finish this letter to her,
begun so often I have forgotten its purpose,
as I have forgotten the act that demands it?
If
I could find the place ... but the fields
we once wandered are paved
and forested with apartments, each fenced,
each gate opened with coded plastic slipped in a slot,
and the beaches are now private property.
This haunted morning like an echo and pain
that flares in an old scar, the waning moon
at false dawn briefly glimpsed, a thin strip of light
like her naked body bent around its shadow,
her name framing an obscured face.
The first osprey I have seen in years dove
and rose screaming, a bass clutched in its talons.
Would I had its sharp eyes, its singleness of purpose,
I could spot my prey from such distance and dive
through lengthening shadows to pull it,
alive and bleeding, from the murkiness within.
But I am a nearsighted, plodding man,
in the hour before midnight clutching at ghosts
that have names but no home,
floundering in a heap of images that scatter
leaving only a residue, and I cannot bind them together.
So I seal this beginning in an envelope with the others,
against the day I can complete it, and walk away,
filled with a dull ache like hunger.
