Poetry

 

 

Lesleigh Forsyth

Hospice

Here, a few more days of spilled leaves, of crickets' teetle.
But already, on the Moose Creek Loop, whiteness has doused fireweed,
shrouded lichen curl and red ooze of sphagnum.

In Denali, birdsong weakens early, quiets into departure.
It's a short season for aster, grass of Parnassus,
for union of juniper and aspen on south-facing slopes.

Near the Muldrow River glacier I saw a merlin take a phalarope
as its Mobiusip flock furled and unfurled over iceewn sea.
Your voice, all question and quaver. Here, perhaps, a few more days.

 

Now

As a child
I learned to listen
for the fifth,
bow on two strings,
hand turning peg,
waiting for the interval to steady.

My first love and I,
bewitched by love songs of Mahler,
intertwined voices of Sinfonia Concertante,
night after night of our first
string quartets, forgot dissonances
of day, action, word;
imagined each other,
sight-read marriage.

Now, together but apart, we find
truer voices, uncomposed selves,
learn again to wind the fifths
from false to true,
begin to say goodbye.

 

 

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