The Second O of Sorrow

Somehow, I am still here, long after

transistor radios, the eight-tracks my father blared

driving from town to town across Ohio

selling things, the music where we danced

just to keep alive. I now understand I was not

supposed to leave so soon, half a century

a kind of boulder that I’ve pushed up the hill

& now for a moment, like Sisyphus

I watch it roll.

I walk through the snow.

I breathe the dirty East Side wind

pushing past the Russian church, the scent

of fish & freighters & the refinery

filling the hole in my chest—how many years

have piled since I last stumbled out onto the ice

& sat down to die.

Only to look up at the geometry

of sky—& stood

to face whoever might need me—

Copyright Credit: Sean Thomas Dougherty, "The Second O of Sorrow" from The Second O of Sorrow. Copyright © 2018 by Sean Thomas Dougherty. Reprinted by permission of BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boaeditions.org.