For W. S. Merwin
by Benjamin D. Carson
There seems now nothing left to be tired of. This age
that has come upon me like a thunderstorm rolling
across the plains has left in its wake an ache in my
bones and a longing for something I can no longer
name, which may just be what longing is, a nameless
something that is a nothing that is nonetheless there.
I didn’t think it’d quite be like this, a time when
what was is greater than what will be, a past that is
truly past. I don’t, like the poet I most admire, wake
to a late happiness, but rather the tug of a thread that
is strong enough to suggest rising but thin enough
to threaten its opposite, in perpetuity, the body supine,
eyes skyward. No. I’m not waiting for death. I’m not
really waiting for anything, just aching and longing —
two words that have become the poetry of my final days.
Copyright © 2019 by Benjamin D. Carson.