The Weight of the World

On both sides of bookstore glass,
glazed eyes contained worlds.

At that moment, you were no different
than your two children, or any child
who has ever stared into a shop window
amazed by glittering things,
or the irreplaceable things
lost so many years ago.

Mother of two, you may have seen the glare
of the aging poet’s balding head—
(maybe that’s what startled you)
or the flock of attuned onlookers
moved by his heavy breathing,
heavy words, heavy heart.

Wandering woman, you may have wondered what
occasion may have warranted
such attention from one man
stuck in the muck of time, whose verse first
dipped into a quiet stream of memory
but drowned us in whitewater.

At that moment, you may have been gripped
by fractured light, or some distant night,
when death was as common as hunger
in your country of origin, where the State
commanded allegiance, friends disappeared,
self-determination wilted in your hands.

Even if you have never seen a man
shoot all his cattle, set his barn aflame,
then hang himself from a rafter—
as the sage poet has—on the other side
of the glass, you may have parried piercing pangs
that ran as strong and coarse as his rapids.

Rising evening wind buckled you and the children.
You—we—all walked on into a world beyond glass.

The troubled aging poet waded still now,
like a heron on the edge of a dark river.

What settled in softly, though, his wake:
a prayer he unwittingly left behind:

___a surfeit of blooming flowers
___that once bowed his 90-year-old friend’s fragile fence,
___that couldn’t contain the weight
___of beauty in this world.

Mark Strohschein is a Washington state poet who lives on Whidbey Island. His work is forthcoming in Flint Hills Review, Cosmic Double and Plants and Poetry’s anthology, Plant People, Vol. 3. His poems have also appeared in Lips Poetry Magazine, In Parentheses, Dippity, Quibble, and a poetry anthology, Dulce Poetica.