Rest—Mischa Willett

Rest

after W.S. Merwin

In Phoenix, I went to the water
where the yellow-jackets, thirsty 
in the desert summer
folded up their grotesque armaments
to drink by the skin
of my sunburning children.

It is forty years since
in the same pool I scraped
my toes trying to stay up,
to stay un-drowned hugging the edge
which of course I am still 
trying to do. 

My grandmother died there and my aunt
and my grandfather too I suppose
though I was too young to know
how his hands folded pushed
his own diaphragm into the dust
as mine will too one day I think

and then and then
in a new city 
o light
the music will take them 
and us and the grass
and everything that has withered
and score it and raise it
and sing it into the echo
that keeps the pool’s surface 
just so permitting this terrible buoyancy. 

---

Mischa Willett is Director of the Whitworth Writers Workshop, a low-residence MFA program in Creative Writing based in Spokane, WA. He is the author of several books of poetry, including The Elegy Beta, and Phases, and of essays, translations, and scholarly articles that appear in a range of international venues. More info can be found at www.mischawillett.com

Photo by Autumn Studio on Unsplash