Die gerettete Zunge

The day broke around me like a cool dream.
Sea; sand; a sky that melts into the sea—a landscape of misty pastels with a look about it of being continuously on the point of melting.

But now he turns to me with a rush of urgent syllables
that break off on a high note—he waits,

staring into my face. That quizzical look.
One eyebrow at an angle.
I have a photograph taped to my fridge at home.

It shows his World War II air crew posing in front of the plane.
Hands firmly behind backs, legs wide apart,
chins forward.

Dressed in the puffed flying suits
with a wide leather strap pulled tight through the crotch.
They squint into the brilliant winter sun of 1942.

It is dawn.
They are leaving Dover for France.
My father on the far left is the tallest airman,

with his collar up,
one eyebrow at an angle.
The shadowless light makes him look immortal,

for all the world like someone who will not weep again.
He is still staring into my face.
Flaps down! I cry.
His black grin flares once and goes out like a match.

’ All that is possessed of life in this world has a voice of its own. The voice is a sign of life. It may grow in strength, break off, be lost, sink to a barely audible whisper. In the chorus of our lives the individual voice is not easily distinguished, but where, suddenly it falls silent, there comes an awareness of the finitude of any sound, of any life…’

In time, he seems less
moved than a part
of that which once moved him,
fleeting, uncontained,
his presence seen only
in what he’s touched:
leaves scattered
and lost, bodies of dust
swirling. He longs
to find some calm within
what he’s become, inside
the sound, a roaming
stillness. It seems
so close, as if he might,
even now, blink and be
there, restored, prepared,
whispering all he remembers.

From my father I inherited the ability
to stand in a field and stare.

Because the outer walls of God are glass.
I see a million souls clambering up the walls on the inside
to escape God who’s burning,

untended

Bluish dusk

fills the room like a sea slid back.