The last words that my daughter spoke, that filled
the station (so it seemed to me), a crowd
of other children pulling her, distill
into a common voice, a high-pitched sound
of metal bearing down on rails, of steam
releasing through a signal horn. I speak
to her in darkness, in late summer’s gleam
of daylight, in the cavity of weeks
that she’s been gone. I conjure her to me
the only way I know—rehearsing all
that I have said, would say, in memory, dreams.
My hope for her is like the wind that pulls
the shutters from their hinges, wordless sound,
lone voice, and I am both the wind and house.
(From Barbarossa)
JONATHAN FINK 