ELEGY
Against the Snow
Your father called and I wondered if it happened because I didn’t pray enough, didn’t have the strength to move a mountain. When I got to your house, the ambulance was in the driveway, lights flashed in the trees. In the kitchen, your father told the ambulance driver, “The boy is cold.” He’d found you in the twilight. The songs you chose repeated on the stereo. He’d looked for words on paper, but there were none. I turned to the window to get away. Instead, I found you. I saw you through the glass. A rescuer knelt by your side. You couldn’t have known that for the rest of our lives, when we heard a siren, when we prayed, when ice coated the forest, when your father cried, when we sat around the table and missed your voice, we’d return to twilight -- to nameless songs on the stereo, to lights in the trees, to you on the other side of the glass, your cheek against the snow.
Published in Poetry Ireland Review, Issue 146