Dear little day later,
Can’t you keep up?
There is no going back
so don’t insist. The view’s bound
by the block, fenced for now
but then will come
and new alarms
will set off and stop.
Don’t wait to be
whistled on. The leaves
have left, and with eyes
half-closed you can make out
wind and weather and all
their small disasters, feathers
flown and cast
across the grass, rain
sieving opened earth. Squint
just right and you can see the past:
the one who held your hands
and crossed her heart,
the one who could undo you
with a shout, the one who made you
go on and get out.
Jacquelyn Pope is the author of Watermark. Hungerpots, her translations of the Dutch poet Hester Knibbe, is forthcoming. She is the recipient of a 2015 NEA Translation Fellowship, a PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant, and awards from the Academy of American Poets and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
