Hayden
What did I know, what did I know
Of gazing silences and terrored stone
Brilliances; beauty of what’s hardbitten
The auroral darkness which is God
Then you arrived, meditative, ironic
My head gripped in bony vice
Mouth of agony shaping a cry it cannot utter
What did I know, what did I know
Of a changing permanence
The stains and dirty tools of struggle
Weaving a wish and a weariness together
Years before your time. Years and years
I gaze through layered light
Within the rock of the undiscovered suns
I see, I walk with you among
The landscape lush, metallic, flayed
Behind us, beyond us now
The very sunlight here seems flammable
Copyright Credit: Amaud Jamaul Johnson, “Hayden” from Red Summer. Copyright © 2006 by Amaud Jamaul Johnson. Reprinted by permission of Tupelo Press.
Source: Red Summer (Tupelo Press, 2006)