Current Issue: Fall/Winter 2010

The Hymn of the Garden (Days)  
Todd Dillard

to be sung to the absence of the husband

Two sparrows on the dusty road,
one’s beak shoved into the other’s,

a fight over a toast crumb. They rise and fall,
rise and fall, a flutter like
a moth struggling against a windowpane
desperate for the candlelight on my nightstand table. 

I want to understand the birds
as one thing—to translate them from the world’s language
into my own—into Hunger, or Memory.

Our son, on his knees right in front of them,
the white fray of his ripped jeans like sheepdog hair. 

Because I see you in his face
I cannot look into his face,
and so I turn

and pull a flower from the garden,
tear its petals from the sepal.

Not like a girl wishing.
But a woman, counting.

 

Todd Dillard received his MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. His work has appeared in Lumina, Sub-Lit, Best New Poets 2010, and elsewhere. His chapbook, The Drowned Hymns, is available from Jeanne Duval Editions.