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There was a human urge,
a final moment, and the long pause
of falling. The hollow sound
of wood, the confusion
from the bedroom, the calling
the calling,
the body, crumbled like petals
beneath the door jamb.
There was the night
the moon pulling the tide,
the moths humming among the lilacs
in the yard, in the cold,
and you standing in the blanched
moonlight unable to move.
There was the sirens,
the flurry of hands, the wheel
of the stretcher that swung idly
as a fish in a stream, in October
in the mountains you hated,
the mountains you read in
and made love in when the nights
were cold. The mountains
you came to appreciate over 50 years
not because you loved fish or rocks or trees
or because you read Whitman,
but because of the flat tire,
the struggle to fix it, the failure,
your laughter at his breeze blown
hair, the sun affirming that it didn’t care
whether either of you were warm
as it dipped below the tree line,
the blanket in the station wagon
where you slept, the way his lips
puffed the heavy breath of sleep.
There was the ambulance pulling away,
there was the dimness of the house,
the silence, the cat across the street
chasing moths, the tattered clouds
behind the tree, the deep pools
of shadow beside you.
Jean Sibelius, Violin Concerto in D minor
For Jascha Heifetz
His bow arm bending like a crow’s
wing, moving as coldness does,
throwing its hair over roofs,
dragging itself across yards.
Breath the dark red in the leaves
that are falling, the late chlorophyll,
the bright green shoots
of bulbs sprouting in winter.
I feel whittled—
to be a wood stump
sprawled somewhere under
a tree—anything that gives
its carbon back a little slower.
To lie down on my lawn
in the fog, count the ticks of dew
that drop from trees, mark
the time signature of trunks,
their slow, rosined limbs
humming against each other.
Having Just Made Love
We watch the cold body of the moon
nestle itself between the intricate wrinkles
faults have made in the blankets of rocks.
What a quaint idea, that the earth needs us.
Shane Eaves received his M.F.A. in poetry from California State University Long Beach, where he served as the poetry editor for Riprap. He is a two time recipient of the William T. Shadden Memorial Award for his poetry. His poetry can be found in The American Mustard Collective, Rust + Moth, Stonecoast Review, Miramar & elsewhere. In addition, Shane’s work has been featured at Soapbox and Fusion—two multi-media, cross genre art shows.