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Shasta


        “If you run now, without a moment’s rest…” 
         – C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy

There are times I feel like Shasta 
on that precipice of the mind, at the line 
between impossibility and
life, just the way it is,
unyielding days with all their demands
and nights too short for rest. It’s a line you either 
leap across or curl up behind to lose yourself 
in dreaming.

Either plant your feet and claim some just reward
or open your hands to take the next day as it’s
laid down like lead bricks
into your palms. 

Cover your face, or look out at the wilderness before you,
newly weary through the old ache,
as your shoulders bear down under the cold press of rain, 
and the hounds ahead string their mournful voices
back along the wind. Hurry, hurry, hurry.

There are times I let the unfairness curdle under 
my breath, and I choke on bitterness
for hours on end.
There are times I hold my hands out again and again
and wonder how a day hasn’t yet slipped
through my fingers and shattered.

Some weeks I don’t know what keeps my heart beating.
I know the rhythm of the sunlight isn’t enough. 

Every now and then, the faint clamor in the distance
shapes itself almost into a hope. (maybe a lion’s heart, 
maybe a father’s sparkling eyes, maybe a birthright restored)
Mostly the call is the same. 

Straight ahead, they cry. Over level or steep,
over smooth or rough, over dry or wet.
Run, run: 
always run.

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To Kai, From Gerda

Just now, I bent to pick a flower;
your absence had hollowed me so thoroughly
my fingers snapped like straws.

I don’t know why you left,
why you slowly, suddenly, like a freezing
river cleaved our home in two,

I don’t—I don’t know why
or when you became who you became.
Your eyes like frosted glass

winking at the world,
your jokes like icicles thrust in my back, as if
I didn’t hear every word.

Do you remember? I think
you cannot:

In the last summer of our childhood
we pressed a rose. Its petals folded
into arches and windows
more intricate than a cathedral, tucked
safe in the heart of our favorite book

and when winter came and we
had opened it before the fire, those dry
petals looked out at us, the face
of something older than innocence

but you wrinkled your nose
and laughed. What a laugh!
It cut me open, harsh
like the northeastern wind
that grinds at the corners of our house,

all bitterness, no mirth.
Like a dead rat, you said.
You didn’t notice me bleeding.

A crow with your mother’s frown
showed me a vision of you: the cold ground
had shattered on your shoulders

and you heaved the pieces
across a colorless floor while she watched
smirking from her throne.

My clever boy, she said,
my clever darling, stay with me
forever.

You sighed tearlessly
and kept working, as if you could craft
eternity from broken earth.
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