Undercurrent/ Crack

There’s a poem in the
placement of this park,

a pond-side bench
across from the hospital

as if the ideas someone says,
"That’ll be nice," in response to,

while planning, are all just
juxtaposition—intentional

and not—that we respond to
without always noticing.

Ruddy ducks and red-tailed hawks
breeding on a gas refinery,

circling smokestacks,
abundant plumes of burn-off and

cumulus clouds buttressing a
shock-blue sky;

the sounds of goose wings
mistaken for a gaggle of bike tires

the terse breeze rippling
this water’s brilliant surface,

my mom’s cancer.

This life is rife
with contradictions

that refuse to announce
their intentions and

and insist on being
drawn out;

multitudes and cracks
in the architecture of night

that let light in, that
we all sometimes try to ignore.

The undercurrent is we
told you so and we did.

Still,

I’m almost sure, if ever asked,
that I’d choose

over and over again
to have known.

Jacob Edelstein is a translator and poet from Los Angeles, California. He earned an MFA in Literary Translation from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and holds a certificate in Dialogic-Collaborative Practices from the Taos Institute. You can read his most recent translation work (from Daniela Catrileo’s Piñen) in The Columbia Journal and The Southern Review.