Unseen Waves After Robert Bly When this cup is empty, I will slide my chair back from the table, I will rise in morning light and thirst no longer. Once, I strode across bright fields between houses, between roads. I listened to the catbird’s call from the tanglebush. I pocketed her song, should I need it later. This is how it is. The count of our days like waves that break unseen behind hills. Wash of a tide that sustains us, barely an echo as we go about our day. Our business is not what we thought here, not what we were taught to want at all, but what we saw in the mirror when we were eleven, the age my daughter is now. I hope she won’t forget, won’t be lost like the rest of us for decades. A secret knowledge simmers in us. I will pass beyond those hills. This knowledge comforts me now. It curls up like a cat beside me. No trumpets. No angels. Only tea by the window, breakers swelling in the distance, if I’m not mistaken.
Alfred Fournier is an entomologist, writer and community volunteer living in Phoenix, Arizona. His nonfiction and poetry have appeared in Amethyst Review, Delmarva Review, American Journal of Poetry, Lunch Ticket, Gyroscope Review, The Indianapolis Review and elsewhere. New work is forthcoming at Blue Unicorn and Drunk Monkeys. His Twitter handle is @AlfredFournier4.
Amethyst Review 