[no title – first line]

 

This is what I do miss

people being darker than they are

leaning over tables

wanting little but to laugh.

 

Black and silver

ornaments of absence

these young faces are

what I will leave behind

in exchange for preservation

for Ireland, for green / descending into water

my memory of it

descends

a wreck against the shore

the boat-line made of iron wrought

and horses

one day spent as if Ulysses

on his course

 

one island became

the triumph of my life

 

And in these dark closer quarters

in the chains across their necks

the ink beneath the skin

the drink, the glance

I see

that same moment

crossed – the black rock

the sea senseless raging underneath

my survival based above

 

my hands surround the limb

that pulls me up into the living

deep – that varied intransient green

that is here

 

What is of little consequence:

an hour spent

waiting for some medicine

to run its course

or counting back

the days and places traveled in.

 

In Ireland no one smokes without offering

around the pack.

 

I remember phosphorescence in the water

tiers of soil cut beneath the green

and the end of the earth

as it breaks, elevated black

and unimaginably high

 

and sleeping with that boy beside

the river and the bottle and the drum

and the wooden chair

and the one window in his yellow room.

 

And the black canals interred within the city streets.

Those in which a teacher dreamed I died.

 

There is no voice

I can tell you these things in

no way to bring you with me

 

I want to.

 

But this is not how things are.

Nor how they will be

beyond this hour

so still that nothing moves

besides a hum and breath –

 

I will not leave

 

until I break (misi me)

set forth

(for you)

something to keep

 

##

by Shannon Nissa Bailey Powers

– from Shannon’s small orange journal