Black Trees Whose Names You Never Wanted to Know
– letter to Lynn Emanuel who said, American poems are not moving
a poem by Richard Widerkehr
You call to your dead father, Stay put. You like the river's
insinuations; not so much the snow, except for the way
it hasn't turned to freezing rain. As for the radio tower
that can't amp up your slightly-crackly voice,
it isn't boring being a voice, but you dislike scenery,
and nothing can make you describe the gelding
in the pixels of the adjacent meadow, or that train ride,
his plummy-gray casket.
There's this fact, your father.
Please, don't get up, you say. He brushes the sleeve
of your coat, almost touches your wrist. I'm cold,
he says. Oh-oh, will you need a diction of sobs
and whistle stops to tell this? His footsteps
in the snow, your footsteps, that black stream
in his field. No, you're coat isn't a broadcloth;
it's worsted, you say. Worsted, what a word.
Do you give him the coat? All the doors
are open, he says, no endings that I know.