All Dark Is Not The Same
Memorium, on Bob’s birthday
The full snow-moon wanes,
night dew drips, and color wakes in red pools
on the brick. A grapevine spar tilts
as a fist sized owl shifts his weight and lifts off.
By the door, a gleam. The green sea of a wine bottle. Night floats
inside a white cup in our son’s room, where your old desk stacks the
dark
in drawers, the edges of its oak surface charred
where you laid your burning cigarettes.
I feel the silence of your linty pockets,
the empty shoes I lined up
on the curb.
The night moves.
All dark is not the same. You dozed into the sleep
you craved, leaving me the black briefcase, the locked trunk,
your trombone’s golden maze.
Before dawn, darkness is deafening. The screech owl
lands on the arbor. You would have been fifty-four
today.
When our son first teetered
under your horn, you showed him how to blow. The cave
of the mouth seals the breath, and the smallest hole
between the lips lets a whistle escape.
The cave of night holds the owl
and his boastful piping. He could fit in the hollow of your hand.
That sweet repeated note says he’s made a kill. Even as you hear him,
his talons tighten and yellow feathers scatter
from the breast of the goldfinch
he is about to swallow
whole.
Megan Bohigian
