When There Was Beauty

When there was beauty there was enough
to fill the entire valley with floating golden lilies.
Evening drives to the river like a purifying ritual—
cassette deck and a shield of sweet tobacco,
the three of us huddled like supplicants
on the bench seat of Ben’s old pickup. And sorrow,
when there was sorrow, was still so small
we could hold it in just one of our closed fists,
toss it from the window or carry it in the shallows,
step with it into the glittering field of minnows
and simply let it go. In my mind we lived
a thousand perfect nights there beside the river,
a thousand nights spent watching the pair
of cranky mute swans glide across the water,
the dusk train rocking in three-quarter time
past the empty reservoir. In my mind
we’re there still, crouched together in the tall grass,
batting at the fuzzy metronomes of bullrush,
ghost birds circling as if to trace a memory’s very edge.
How it takes a sharp contour—white feather
against bronze water—to make the mind
a matrix, to set, finally, a lasting cast.
When there was beauty there was enough
to sustain an entire watershed of lost young men,
so we kneeled each night and washed ourselves
on the rushing current. Somewhere on the horizon
the rest of our stories were already being written
in life’s black and messy ink. But there beside the river
we were writ only in hawthorn and duckweed,
in the watery starlight just beginning to wink.
There beside the river we knelt and we drank.