Postscript

It’s not words we need tonight, but the antidote
to what has already been said. Yes, there’s a man
sitting lakeside in an idling car. Yes, there’s
a slug crossing a road in the rain, and a drugstore
where people sway like tropical leaves—in a wind
that thinks of antibacterial soap and condoms,
a two liter of coke. Yes, my father is dying
and the soil turns with its vocabulary
of beetles, its glistening, diamond vowels. Yes,
any face is a temporary face, and God knows
enough about when the mangoes must turn red,
when the garbage man must wake in the dark.
Here. There. A bowl left out in the rain. We fill it
with so many thoughts. As if afraid to merely live
in love. As if even this fear belonged to us.

Sam Taylor
Postscript is from Body of the World (Ausable Press, 2005).