The Best American Poetry 2013 by David Lehman Read Free Book Online Page A

thoughts
    reached him?
    Perhaps he would have said
    in my case there was no obstacle (for the sake of argument)
    after which I would have been
    referred to religion, the cemetery where
    questions of faith are answered.
    The mist had cleared. The empty canvases
    were turned inward against the wall.
    The little cat is dead (so the song went).
    Shall I be raised from death , the spirit asks.
    And the sun says yes.
    And the desert answers
    your voice is sand scattered in wind.
    from Poetry

BECKIAN FRITZ GOLDBERG
Henry’s Song

    for Nancy and Bill
    Sometimes sitting in a friend’s backyard on a fall evening
    a thing comes to you. But then you second-guess yourself.
    You second-guess yourself, and your grace is gone.
    The cat dish is there by the step, overturned in the dry leaves,
    the trees here taller than any trees in your dreams. You’re afraid
    if you stay here they might talk. And these nights
    you only want to hear someone say, Yes,
    I think of these things, too  . . . Nine o’clock, cold,
    I couldn’t see the stars for the trees, only the yellow light
    of the back window doubled over on the ground. In it,
    leaves laid with the kitchen. Then a figure passed:
    My friend reaching up into the cupboard and looking lost
    a little while. His wife bringing in a cup and dish. Both of them
    standing by the sink talking maybe about buying apples tomorrow
    or what movie or the jacket no one can find. Her hair
    was still damp from the shower and haloed in the kitchen light
    as he crossed into the next room blue with the blink of the TV.
    That afternoon my friend had thought his cat was lost and we
    searched for an hour but the cat had sunk into a deep pile of leaves,
    lay half-covered and asleep. The cat who was not lost was named
    Henry and he was dead a few weeks later of old age. At night
    he’d come in the room where I slept, and sit
    staring down at the heating vent and, hours later, if I rose to pee,
    he’d still be there as if waiting for something specific to rise
    through the floor. But life inside the house that night was golden,
    though then the kitchen was lonely, the cereal boxes misaligned
    on the shelf, a nest of white bowls, mugs upside down in a row.
    I thought someone will be left to open the cupboards after
    we are dead and there see everything has stayed the way
    we left it. Say yes, you think of these things, too. And that’s
    when the thing that came to me came to me and when I
    second-guessed myself I lost what the thing was. Sometime
    it might return, but for now I’ll say it was nothing. It was nothing.
    Inside the house someone was asking, Did you take Avantix
    and suffer heart failure? Do you live alone? Are you tired of carpet stains?
    Do you need a loan fast? Yes. And yes and yes and yes.
    I’ve thought of these things, too—standing at the window while skeletons
    on TV marched toward a cartoon cowboy. It was even stranger
    in the silence of early November, away from home. But life was gorgeous
    in the house. The glazed red sugar bowl gleamed. Months
    later, my friend told me sometimes he’d still mistake
    the shadow, the wool scarf bunched on the chair, and think
    it’s Henry. As if the mind believed absence is a trick. For it
    can still see everything. But the world asks, Do you have crow’s-feet?
    Do you have enough to cover your funeral costs? Ever feel irregular?
    Do you have trouble sleeping? That night the wind blowing
    dead leaves sounded like a distant ocean, my fingertips
    numbed with cold & the lit window held everything sacred
    in its church. I saw that light the next day slanting as we walked
    through an apple orchard and stopped at the mill for cider.
    Farther on, we came to a large pond where pike and recluse sturgeon
    lurked beneath the surface. On the bridge was a machine you’d put
    a quarter in for a handful of food for the fish. I watched my friend
    toss some in the water and the pond became alive with