What Will Survive
BY DAN ROSENBERG
This small gray stone nestled
between two larger speckled ones,
maybe. Some crickets, but not
this one. The mountain, as silt,
as ocean floor. What trash
we’ve launched into the cold
between worlds. The word
sedimentary will not. Nor this
heat between us. The twinge
in my hip, the crook of your grin,
every murmured word
in the pre-dawn blear of being
together, no. But maybe
for a while the scar our son
carries like a secret kiss
in the new valley of his back.
Which won’t survive even
as long as the brick he buried
between our yard and the woods
when spring called him to the dirt
again. That foolhardy seed.
Maybe not the pleasure
of fingers digging down,
but the dirt itself, the good
or unclean dirt. The ribs at least
of the city where we live.
Some atoms shaking
in the air between us now,
surely, but not the knowledge
that now they are here, here.
This metal closet handle,
torn loose. How the ocean
erases what’s marked on the shore.
The desire of anything to tilt
its head when watching a puddle’s
surface, to right what it is
we see reflected there.
