photo: ralph murre
Four for
Mario
by
Karl Elder
I.
Suddenly
a poem seems dumb.
Maybe
like you I’d rather perform:
I
rehearsed a week to tell my son
of
your death. I learned by heart
how
not to speak, to trust my tongue.
He
waited till I was done.
He
stared at me across the room
as
I cradled my younger one.
He
loves you, he said.
Even
dead.
II.
The
pictures didn’t turn out,
Though
I can picture each frame:
Seth,
your understudy, your “main
man”
in your lap.
What
a team of dreamers!
If
only we had a script, you said,
there’d
be money enough to keep him in Underoos
and
us in booze
till
hell froze over.
III.
It’s
been a bitter winter.
We
play the planet Hoth.
Seth
is Luke, I’m Vader.
Once
through my mask
I
heard hint of your voice,
and
once, stung by a gust,
I
spun, sensing your form, your shadow
near
snow packed high by the plows,
iced
all over, glistening
like
a huge granite boulder.
IV.
A
man enters the shadow of rock
and
the shadows are one.
Black
is our shadow on the moon,
the
shadow of earth,
which
is the shadow of rock.
Black,
which is the color
of
every man’s shadow.
Black
am I there who here am white.
Black
like my brother,
you,
who called me Brother.
~
previously published in A Man in Pieces (Prickly
Pear Press)
