On Abiding
By Joanna Klink
I never wanted
to be awash in
agreement, I never
wanted to argue or
agonize, only to listen
for the rain blown
against glass, sense
who you are
when you are alone but
with me. Present,
the way a birch
late at night
is present to wind.
*
Only I wanted you
next to me
in a sleeping
curve of heat. It seemed
I was always
misplacing you.
But I loved every
part, eyelashes.
and limbs, the way you
leapt into the day.
To want a simple life
might mean
to have given up
on expectation.
It could mean
that faith is easily
crushed, that something
as easy as crossing
the street at dusk
is suddenly too physical,
too narrow, too
empty, too hard,
too rich, too small,
too soon.
*
If I could see
through the rains,
the liquid trees,
quarrel only for a
moment, never be
rushed. Stop
completely at the river’s
lightflutter and wait
until it passes
and feel the quiet
which is the sound
of hawk and
cloud—to make
good of what you have,
to feel the air press
around you and not regret
the loss of you—
the windows of the
night-trains filling with
metal dusk—snow
turning back to rain,
the underside
of everything you have ever
cared for, unsparing
days and nights,
the plain evening,
hard work, the uncertainty, the
courageous happiness,
the suffering, to see it, to stay
alive, to hope, to hope
for more, to act,
to crave, to reach for,
to let ourselves be
graced, to leave behind
made things, luminous things,
cool trails of fire,
to tap and then step back,
falling silent, to risk an
opening, to find time
to be nowhere and lost
and to love. If we
can. If we do.
Copyright Credit: "On Abiding" from The Nightfields by Joanna Klink, copyright © 2020 by Joanna Klink. Used by permission of Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. House LLC.
Source: The Nightfields (Penguin Random House LLC, 2020)