issue 31 > poetry > hadas

For, on behalf of, instead of, for the benefit of:
luminous datives floating on the air
conjure an emptiness. Someone can't
do something, isn't here, so we act for them.

Now and then a shape's discernible
by triangulation. When a small child
looks up, one can infer some guardian.
Or when a grownup walks too far and fast,

then pauses to look back, it's at a creature,
child or dog, for whom one hopes they'll wait.
The pull is all but visible. Take you,
a man-shaped absence striding along Cottage Street.

I turn to glimpse you: no one.
Still, I invite you: come and drink them in,
the tide, the rocks, the nacreous ocean light.
Smell the beach roses. Taste my ice cream cone.

I hold it out to, for, instead of you.
Here, have a lick. It's dripping? Never mind.
Things morph, melt, vanish. You're a case in point,
dear disembodiment. Nor will I be

permitted to stroll indefinitely,
licking my Indian Pudding ice cream cone,
up and down the crowded summer street.
It only seems that way this afternoon.






Also by Rachel Hadas:

The Funeral
Elegy Revisited