My Blog

Francisco X. Alarcón

ninguna               no
frontera              border
podrá                 can ever
separarnos          separate us

                    The same night, whitening
                         The same trees. We of that time,
                         Are no longer the same.
                                          - Pablo Neruda, Tonight I can write

I am dreaming about you, Abbie,
                        As the world submits
Itself to sleep again and pale
                        Night repaints all
Life into a probable   
                             Miracle:
                                        Another street, perhaps, 
                                  A path of possibility repairing
                                        Loved things lost or broken,
                                 Back into the sanctuary of sight.

I am dreaming about you, and of my grandmother,
              How her breath drifted, coughed
Away from her body, leaving behind the church-
              White hospital bed and downcast
Windows;
        You, and my injured left leg, the chancy
              Subdivision moons, basketball,
And that sour scooter accident—the face, scent, shadow
              Of all that has abandoned me.

I am dreaming about you, and of October,
              The clumsy minutes I’ve pieced
Together, thinking, that things must have
              Their own places in the world,
That what’s here and not here are entirely
              The way things are:
Aratiles, distance, that poem you sent me
              Which I could not understand.

Even then, I knew that the best and worst
              Would come and go,
That loss never really makes sense:
              Not death, not my grandmother,
Not even you, Abbie. Night recalls all
              That will never make sense
Again—which seems just perfect—
              Splendid as in hours when

I close my eyes and dream that I am walking
                        Straight again, while
My grandmother sits back, laughing
              At a memory or a joke.
In these times, I swear there must be
              Something bigger behind
All the senselessness life hands us,
              That we can hold on
To things we’ve lost through the changes
              They leave:

Absence of laughter, fleeting memory of a voice
              Or name, dream, a world
Of photographs, each picture accepting
              What the mind can’t understand.