Long Story Short
By G. E. Murray
One marriage, three children, the usual hero-to-hump tale
of jobs in alternating altitudes, stories of unrequited joy.
Fresh identities, dramas unseen. Too much of dawn
going dark, making for a rich meal of dread, when contemplating
love above the brim.
You also should talk about dealings with heavy weather
and one-night agonies, as if descending permanently
into a single distinction. It boils to skin
and plain whim, or any fabrication sufficient
to implicate the act.
Just then, something glimpsed from a taxi careening
through Paris, afterimages of a lost father’s face
becomes a tree in the park, tall, rustling with allusions,
or was it simply cool air stealing across your face—
that isolation again?
Copyright Credit: G. E. Murray, “Long Story Short” from Arts of a Cold Sun. Copyright © 2003 by G. E. Murray. Used with the permission of the poet and the University of Illinois Press.
Source: Arts of a Cold Sun (University of Illinois Press, 2003)