James Kimbrell

The hay rake’s rattle, the stunned sputter of a moccasin

Slung in the blades, the mid-gloam crickets sending

Their codes as though from a nearby country of dreamers.

Each sound found its shape – low drip into mud beneath

The leaking spigot, scrape of sparrows stowing twigs

In the eaves, the combines fading, unzipping the bean

Rows and back again, and the wind-combed drift

Of dust in the field, which is where I can hear it most

Clearly now, my pointing the direction away

From that town, saying there I am, there I am, there I am…

It was the evening after my grandfather’s funeral

That my father and I first drank together. That night

Behind the house we laughed and pissed as if

Death had freed up something in us, as if in lowering

That sky-blue coffin my father had descended into

The role of the eldest son, the dependable one

Graveside with all his brothers, well-dressed

And not weeping together. We sat beneath the moon-

Whitened maple branches toasting one another.

When he drank, I drank. I cussed when he cussed.

I crossed my legs. I bowed my chest. But when

He threw his glass as if to crack it against the lip

Of a star, when his syllables riddled over the tongue

Of some other man’s wandering soul,

I sat there dumb. I couldn’t reply. And what

Was there to say? I had already said good-bye.

After the dancing ended, and the Russians

Had boarded for Vladivostok, just then:

A kettle of water, a bottle of wine, a dimly

Audible scuffle of soldiers in the street,
Drunk in the middle of a cease-fire.

That was all that could be heard from the tables

And chairs, from the room with its mirrors

Vaguely aglow. No women in the corner

Selling drinks, no lonely GI mouthing

The words. A silence long enough to hold.

And then, as if it had never happened: music

Again, glasses touching, a couple hurriedly

Retaking the floor, the bartender shouting,

Counting his change, and someone writing

Someone’s name in the breath-wet window.