appealing

The Maynard
Spring 2018

Michael Boccardo
0:00
 
 

Crane

How can I gift to you
                               the folding & unfolding
smoothed into uncertainty
                                          Watch—                  my mother
                  will teach you the origami of it:
                                                                  Crease each corner
                              Pennsylvania winters
                              crisp white gloves
                              the sepia of a startled horizon
Which is worse:  a girl engulfed
                                          by the silhouette of her own regret
Or the facades which won’t emerge
                  —a husband      sons      the blocks she once chalked
                                                                  down a Jersey sidewalk—
Instead, winter flutters back into fall
                              her mother a mist of Jean Naté—
                  the past migrates toward a slow starvation
How can I show you the difference between ruin
                  & sacrifice             the way they endure the same
                                                                  sorrow
                                                                                    like loving
someone who will one day forget to love you back
How can I help you
                  appreciate the pattern that was never a pattern
                                          but only pieces altered       mended
In those moments when all I want
                                          is to look at her                     I can’t
My wind-rippled lake
my vanishing sky
                              her silhouette      a thousand feathers
                                                                                    ascending into myth