SAYING HELLO TO GOODBYE
John Sibley Williams
Reversing back up into the womb,
the foal’s feet, head, and all hope
the night will end without forcing
my arms deep into a cut open body
to retrieve a smaller body already more
adept at worlding than I’ll ever be.
Maybe this is a conversation
I should have had with my own mother:
is there more to ‘no’ than leaving you
empty? can’t there be more to ‘yes’
than how distances collapse only
after it’s too late?
Though tonight—grunting back up into
where I came from like the heavy ringing
stuck in the should-be-hollow of a bell—I
think I am helping life learn itself:
unspindling legs, freeing the small
constellations they’ll soon indent into grass
while running away. Mother, just this once,
with my hands, let me speak
of an enduring intimacy.
MINOR RUIN
John Sibley Williams
Winter, with the sky
stretched to its limits,
with night all used up.
Everywhere, empty
reservoirs stars
once filled. Not
so much with light,
warmth, but the hope
insubstantial things might
satisfy what our hands
left tattered. Hungering.
Haloed in ruin—
but a minor ruin,
like a tree not born
crooked but malformed
by ropes into a special kind
of beauty. There must be
a better way to love
the world than dreaming
ourselves so far from it.
Think of beginnings
just before they lose
their luster. When I told
my son somewhere
something is right now
waking up from a deep
sleep, I assumed it
would mean more.
I’m thinking of a hard
blue lake just before thaw.
I’m thinking how wonderful
a deer he will make
when finally famished
enough to leave me
to my darkness.
Starless. Imperfect.
This sweet,
sweet animal darkness.
LAST PIER
John Sibley Williams
If the birds are to be believed, this harbor of small boats—
docked and waiting impatiently
for cloud break, storm hush,
an opening into the world
wide enough to pass unnoticed— is the cause of all our suffering.
Something awful resides
in trusting the hours to fill themselves. Have you seen
an old herring factory gutted by empty seas?
The eye of a lighthouse spinning alone, mistless, pleading
to return a few of our ghosts to us? A boy
mimicking oarstrokes in the tub lost within the shadow
of his absent father?
A dusty window lined with sailboats made of toothpicks in bottles?
Anchors eroding in the front lawns of sailors’ wives?
If I was born to do one thing right, it’s to breathlessly watch
ships become distance,
then let the distance lift
into overwhelming gratitude—
to have known him, to have been known by him, someday, I hope,
to vanish without goodbye.
John Sibley Williams is the author of nine poetry collections, most recently Disinheritance. A five-time Pushcart nominee and winner of various awards, John serves as editor of The Inflectionist Review. Recent publications include: Midwest Quarterly, Massachusetts Review, Poet Lore, Columbia Poetry Review, Mid-American Review, Third Coast, Baltimore Review, and Nimrod.
