New Vacancy in the Wind District

There was a remark on softness—
of a rescue helicopter answering the sirens,
& someone did hear the infant
crying indistinctly, unseen, & arrived
with gentle hands in response.
But it wasn’t until hours later, walking together
through the cemetery, that neighborhood farthest
from contact, as night transfigured the gravestones
into dim mirrors, that we listened
for desire. A thunderhead
whittled away the constellations. Returning
home, we touched the air that departed
through our open windows to be among the sizzle outside.
You agreed I was growing into my father
but with my mother's anxiety, & what was most true
is you knew me well enough to know this.
Holding my hand, you led me through our fucking
in the dark, lightning quietly lamping the clouds. Once,
you woke me from a nightmare you measured
through the changing tempo of my breath.
Your hand on my arm, a hook
dredging me from the coarse sponge of night.
In the good dream, the winemaker told us
every grape in the vineyard passed through his hands
at the harvest, & we sprawled blissfully into our chairs
to watch our own contentment flourish, until I forgot
how it ended. Memories fasten best
if we connect them to what we already have,
meaning retention dilates through empathy & experience.
(I remember Inez plucking at the skin around her fingernails,
fraying the dead cells into string,
& the mood I held in watching, unconvinced of even
myself, is how the newly dead must feel
as they first stumble upon the blue-shadowed grapes
in the easy maze of the vineyard after.
Beyond the rows, farther away than any of us
could hope to remember, a forest of eyelashes swirling,
within each lash a wish
waiting to be plucked by a breath.)

Duncan Campbell lives in Vermont. His poems have most recently appeared in Barnstorm, the Northern New England Review, and Outlook Springs.