Epithalamium with a Crop in Hand
For David & Justin
They are only ours a minute, in the room lit
by a fork on crystal, and through crystal, light,
into its sevenness peels. There are ordinary gestures
made remarkable by the approach of two hands, twice,
in which the signal thrives, and from the genital doubling
the broadcast pauses traffic, the radio host gathers to his chest
the records closest to him, and leaves the king's recording
pouring through the tinny syndicate. Things move into
other things. Cells before emphatic eyes divide,
but so too ten-thousands-fold on days when unobserved,
days without a microscope, un-guested, and their splitting
is a kind of matrimony, a conjunction in the tally.
I, too, will be guilty of imagination by corkscrew.
I wish them ravening geese
on a pond ten thousand times taken up by sun,
and given back by cloud.
I wish them the snap of embers on a hearth
when already one has gone to bed,
and the sound of the pantry door the other closes.
I wish them each a glass of milk,
and calcium for years in the windows beyond it.
I wish solace and private smiling
at the tree untinseled and hoisted tenderly
into a dumpster greener than its own occasion
in a year that shut with mirth and good company.
For the lovers of seasons, Adirondack chairs.
From the magnet of beaches, the teeth
of megalodons turned up in an abalone tide.
For the perpetual decoration of the nest,
I wish them sparks.
Like the stillness of eager horses, the gate is already empty,
the race, splendidly in boomeranging progress down the track,
and the thought to run together was born
from the blessing of the blinders, and the signal of a breath—
and the giving of the bridle up. Theirs are the strong withers
that pass a warm stir of air to the fence. Static electric,
their lockstep is recursive, and with all the grace
of a blessing unbidden, let us spend our elbows
on the crossbeams for a second, as the patter
of the gallops falls together, their new liberty
just guessable—as the pickets disappear.
Alec Hershman is the author of Permanent and Wonderful Storage (Seven Kitchens, 2019), winner of the Robin Becker Chapbook Prize and The Egg Goes Under (Seven Kitchens, 2017). He has received awards from the KHN Center for the Arts, The Jentel Foundation, Playa, The Virginia Creative Center for the Arts, and The Institute for Sustainable Living, Art, and Natural Design. He lives in Michigan where he teaches writing and literature to college students. You can learn more at alechershmanpoetry.com.