Living with Fog
       

In the famous cemetery, the souls of the famous dead
swirl their tombstones at night—thin fog of the city,
some say, dismissing the notion of afterlife, of rising

from graves—while others swear they have heard
the language of souls, which is dose to the language
of fog: fast-moving, obscuring, hard to grab hold of.

I am not here to settle the debate: souls, no souls.
I can see no end to it, and besides, some of those
who wander the cemetery have never heard

of the famous dead. Everything has complications,
even the streets I took to get here, with their sudden turns,
their inclines, their buildings with worn faces waiting

as the dead are said to wait, for nothing, expectation
not being part of their domain. And the bed I left,
the complications there—the lover still sleeping, dreams

unknown, the words we will not say because I linger
with the dead. You have to turn toward wanting again,
he told me, meaning to honor my grief yet not indulge it,

and I saw myself walking in a green coat, open to the wind,
young as I had never been young, not pulled toward grief
even as I went on living. Just the pure gesture of green,

of pushing forward. I saw this, but the woman
bearing my face and name, leaving her coat open—
how would I know I could rely on her

to stay? He was sleeping, a tangle of sheets
and dreams, everything I wanted there yet
not, like fog no one can keep from disappearing.

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Copyright © 2018 Lynne Knight All rights reserved
from The Language of Forgetting
Sixteen Rivers Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission