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| corey mesler |  | 1. And the Snow Covered Everything A universal blanket of white, we chose to see it as a benison. It covered our rotting swingset, our dog dish, the abandoned tools. It covered our reasons for staying inside, our recalcitrant hunger, our memory of why we came to this, why we saw this as some kind of conclusion. It covered our bad feelings, the pettiness between us, the bitter perfume of endings. For a day, for two, we looked out upon our property and saw only a blank to be filled in, a field where we could start over. When the thaw came—and it came quickly—it was all we could do to put the blinders back on before we were denuded ourselves. We avert our eyes. We don’t see the mudholes, the mire, the rot. Remember when it snowed? we say now. Remember when it was all covered up? Remember the way the light bounced off it as if it were a mirror or a sea of glass? Remember how much we loved, really deeply loved, the snow? 2. Life in and Out of the Sty It was a pig child we raised as if our own. When school started we all had to duck. Still there were evenings of love and games and the kinds of meals that go best with a prayer. When he went out into the world for the first time he was barely sullied. We smiled as if he were our very own. We smiled like any parent, touched by starlight, hungry for the unnecessary boon. 3. Limning the Dream Today I write the poem that limns the dream, the one where you were both lover and daughter, where you both loved me and cheated on me. The past is an open sore. The past is a classroom where the tests come before anyone is ready. I helped you with your math, problems that became poems because poems is all I know. I helped you pass and in return you cuckolded me. You were my last best lover. You were my daughter growing older, growing toward leaving. And I woke with a heart sore from what is imagined, from what dreams dish out like pun- ishment. I woke thinking of you, seeing your face here in the template where my life goes from past to future without a stop, without even a ripple of contentment. Save us all from content- ment, my last and best lover. | |
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