The Prism

 

Don’t serenade my tombstone

with your sobbing violins, or play

a sombre requiem

for my God-forsaken soul.

 

Laugh out loud in lieu,

not in metaphor but for real—

I’m just beyond your touch

but not the still of a subtle

prayer. See me in the spectrum

as the glass breaks down the colours:

 

sweating, pitching haggard baseballs

in a lot in Tennessee,

quarrelling with the ump,

hurling spitters past the plate;

 

and on days I’m feeling calmer,

serving ice cream cones to children

beneath our Sol at Stanley Park;

 

and just beyond the tree line

in the north, when I’m a little more

daring, forging a trail like

Robert Frost—a little less

worn than most, bones I will inter in

frozen ground.

 

On a clear & sable night near

Santiago, I’m mapping out the stars,

decrypting radio

waves, sending signals of my own:

 

that I was never

lost but never found,

that I’m more than just a body

and the sum of all its parts,

that my words can really breathe

out on their own—

for all our benefit—

 

yours, mine, and the cross-

eyed baby girl in

Lisbon.

 

Dial proper frequencies

for pick-up.

Hear me sing a lullaby,

softly, in Portuguese.

 

 

 

©Andreas Gripp