"Loneliness Was Part Of It" by Jaye Kranz from FROZEN SEA

Today's poem is by Jaye Kranz

Loneliness Was Part Of It

though the part takes up most of the space. There is a buffalo here, if more like a shape where a buffalo was. Night is fixing to him—and fifteen spears—as he runs, driving the deepest-dye behind him—fifteen things he can't forget, fifteen times he tried—looking like a species of loneliness, like an argument against loneliness, the exact shape of ongoingness. Inside this buffalo is a moon. Loneliness is its own light. With it, I go around the house inspecting holes the beetles began making, winters ago, in the pine floor that any time now, could shear away. With it, I sharpen every pencil to a point. Sometimes one loneliness sharpens another. Some nights I want to lean over and fill in the buffalo with more of the colour of buffalo, to stop him from paling into the part. Once, I hinged between vital and vanishing; could see my own parting; could follow an algebra for leaving. But that was before I leaned over and began filling myself in with more of my colour. It is almost the length of him, but his ears are past loneliness—like he hears his own name or a future song. These faint doubles, his back legs repeating, tell me: inside this buffalo is another. And another. They found one of you, once, high on a wall, buffalos ago, after climbing a fig tree to find your old cave. Already, the stride you just took is a memory of last buffalo. Your knee is to new buffalo. I want to tell the buffalo this. I want to be able to put the point down without picking it up. We are sometimes buffalo, sometimes spear, sometimes last winter. Dear darkling, there is a chorus—it's just over the bridge. You were never just one animal.

* after 'Open Diary: no. 43', a work on paper by Jumaadi, 2012

Copyright © 2025 Jaye Kranz All rights reserved
from Frozen Sea
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission

Home
Archives Web Weekly Features Support Verse Daily About Verse Daily FAQs Submit to Verse Daily