Cardinals
BY KEVIN YOUNG
Today I do not know
what the trees will do—
barely believe tomorrow
they will bloom
whites & blues, the dogwood
winking at you.
Reed about
my waist. Tomorrow
something will give way—
green will crowd
the winter out—
but today all brown, the sky
& ground devour
each other, swallow
us down. What lives
in the buffeting
must bend.
The cedar out-
lasting winter—
how it leans, sheds
limbs like a soldier.
Ditch
BY KEVIN YOUNG
Day he died,
Samuel Beckett’s father, doctor
said, was doing better—
Doctor scarcely out the door
when dear Dad collapsed,
sweet pea all over his face.
At the promise, Beckett
had donned the brightest
clothes he could find, later
watched last words
fall from Dad’s
pained mouth: Fight,
fight, fight. And, What
a morning.
Three days after,
Beckett wrote
his friend, I cannot
write about him—
the letter proof
to the contrary. I can only
walk the fields and climb
the ditches after him,
his father buried
between the mountains
& the sea. God
love thee—Sam.