Three Poems by Simon Perchik

*

You glance the way fishermen aim

then cast their nets and though the camera

will struggle it’s the sea that needs

mending :another chance

at how much longer in the embrace

corners will form for a photograph

already in fear –nothing moves

where what will come and what not

makes you feel for glass, want to be seen.

*

Again a calendar, each page

is burying you in the sea

that races past your forehead

with only your hands for shoreline

and one year more

–by nailing it to this wall

you agree not to forget

and fast, go hungry :trust

will return, already draining the light

from the sun, sprinkling its warmth

not yet those old love songs

choking louder and louder

as days, weeks, wing beats

and from this heavy paper

an overwhelming joy

–it will happen, embraced by circles

and fresh scented shining blades

–you will lean into this wall

become branches and leaves

that are not yet smoke

though month after month

stay close, want to be lifted

remembered as the dotted line

the promised, no longer falling.

*

All but the splash is thickening

half as marrow, half

feathers and long ago seas

share this pot with bones

dropped end over end

though they stay, are growing wings

the way mourners are overcome

by turbulence, lean into each other

–it’s a dark kitchen, barely room

for the talons that will stretch

are already flying side by side

as smoke reaching around the silence

all afternoon carrying the dead

though finally every bone becomes too heavy

from nothing inside but shoreline.