P O E T R Y
Parting in Winter
CANDACE HOWZE
T
HERE must be more to this story than a weathered wooden table on a brick patio. More than two glasses of foaming Irish cider and a bagel that neither of us has consumed. I sense someone may be hearing our conversation and reflect on a time he found his likeness rippling through a pond near the Michigan countryside. Someone might frame us in a photo: running our mouths in the background of a posed Kodak, nameless characters of their memory; stars in our own. This is the instant after the luck has run out that we stop drinking on outdoor patios at wooden tables, when the sun no longer sets at Brightleaf. The sun just goes missing, like it doesn’ t want us to witness its drowning— this immeasurable sinking of an enormous light.
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