Blizzard + Dying Words
Chris Forhan
Blizzard
That’s a good word—blizzard—blurred, swift,
the sound fishing up from below
a long ago downdraft, snow, fast flicks
at my bedroom window, I was ten,
fine film of water blearing the glass,
orange slices in a bowl on the bedside table,
beneath the needle the Beatles keening
You don’t get me. Blizzard: is that the word
that floated into my head then? What
does it matter. He’s gone, that boy
is dead, now that I have thought,
so late, to make him speak.
Dying Words
Clod is gone, and nincompoop:
useful names for us once. They vanished
as my sad dying dad did
and one or two childish wild loves—
so slow to erode I took no notice
till a flitter of wind undid them.
Always some mindless spring
is spidering forth out of absence,
upright sticks in sludge
something-or-othering
into fusses of pink and yellow.
Whatever is lost returns, just
in fresh form. What good is that?
O lion, turning your back,
padding grandly away into tall grass,
let me follow for once to where you go.
Of what you show me there,
I’ll say nothing, I promise.
Chris Forhan’s latest book is A Mind Full of Music: Essays on Imagination and Popular Song. He has also published a memoir, My Father Before Me, and three books of poetry and has received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and three Pushcart Prizes. He teaches at Butler University in Indianapolis.