“Look at Us Living” by Megan Moriarty

Megan Moriarty

LOOKING AT US LIVING

Through the binoculars, we saw us
moving through the foliage.

The world was on rewind:
a herd of horses ran
backwards across a field.

Yellow leaves kept climbing back
to their branches.

“What’s the opposite of fall?” I said,
and he said “Spring.”

Then it was August, then July,
then June. The sun kept
leaving and coming back

like a boomerang that no one
ever had to throw.

Snow appeared
on the ground, then it started
unsnowing, the flakes
travelling upwards.

I knew that soon
we wouldn’t know each other

so I asked him
what the opposite
of stay is.

He stood there,
his hands on his hips, thinking.

from Rattle #35, Summer 2011

__________

Megan Moriarty: “For me, a poem is a place where everything is possible. Life can be stopped and rewound. Through writing, you can look at that possibility, and see what impossibilities—what human things—keep showing up anyway.”

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