Sharon Fagan McDermott: Summer Prayer — Pennsylvania

            ~in memory of Brendan

We make each other a mooring,

early evening here in the small world,

where gods grumble and root in the dirt

and the red barn molders in summer light,

setting ripe fields to fire.

What we are doing is interpreting

the cirrus clouds, wisps

of names, our beloved dead

who console us with such luminous days

so that we remember them all over again.

Children trail their fingers

in the creek. Birds braid tree limbs

into fluency, while we flicker like old photographs

in the dwindling light. A quarter moon

emerges, a rain halo around it—and you,

my younger brother, my twenty years-gone

companion—flicker on the edge of fire-fly shine.

I breathe deep the soaked wine of fallen apples,

call up your dark curls, long limbs,

your head thrown back in a laugh.

But it is only imagination, summer’s limitless

acres. Words cannot bring you back.

But, if words can do anything,

Let them swirl in constellations.

Let them hold you as I can’t.

Let them bless this ink with stars.

—

Copyright 2016 Sharon Fagan McDermott. Originally published in Eclectica Magazine, April 2016

Sharon Fagan McDermott