Rachel Pearsall

Town

Because I have the skill of grief,
I know some things that will happen.
There’ll be an icy morning when we stamp
our feet on the riverbank, as dawn-light
dims and fog propels in, keeping watch
for the last laden boat. Then
the river will enter
its ten-year-long freeze.

In the first year our voices will be
muted, companionable—this too
shall pass. I’ll wave to you, and you’ll
shuffle across the ice, not bothering
with the bridge, treading on copper
pine needles that rot
but cannot sink, your sliding progress
gently funny to us both.

Because I have the skill of grief, I’ll daydream:
Before the freeze I was down among things,
in kinship with fire-colored flowers in the sedge.
Before the freeze the economy was
colorful emporia. Money
came easy, and we took shifts
in each others’ shops and diners. We
had the strength of
fun, of competence at fun.

By the fourth year I’ll dream only
vague envies of creatures that thrive in sod,
insensible of freezes. Hunger fed
by clawing hunger will gut
even my signal power of grief. And in
the back apartment of some homes
there’ll be an old woman who has seen
three freezes. People will
greet her with disguised
horror, patronizing.

The freeze will have surprised us, as it surprised
our parents when we were children. Freezes are
irregularly spaced; we have no plan—
except to misremember pleasant times as
happy, well-supplied kitchens
as the love of God. But maybe I was
hard, efficient, spreadsheet-keeper, queued up
to grieve when called on. If you feed on me—the mind
that glows with hurt among frozen
reeds—diminish
me to ruminant, we’ll all
survive somehow.

Because I have the skill of grief,
I know some things that will happen.
One day the smutted ice will crack like drums
and disembody jaggedly, and currents will
arthritically remember how to flow.
And we will engineer the pleasantness again—
aggressively, with magic markers, greed,
and petulance, another kind of ice.
We’ll make no plan, except to misremember
the freeze as someone else’s fault,
no shame.

Rachel Pearsall grew up and lives in East Tennessee, where she pokes around looking for the sublime, reflecting on what it means to be Appalachian, and trying to find the best breakfast.