Michael Lauchlan
To Freedom
Nobody cut the word from our heart walls
—Paul Celan (Trans. David Young)
Breath by breath between children
between sisters parting, between
lovers in the rage of love, a word hummed.
Wordkin of lover and friend,
it’s walked from deserts and steppes
with a straggling line of families
and been slurred, translated, refracted
and often proved counterfeit.
One day I’ve lugged my bag
from office to car and a knot in my back
creaks when I try to back out.
But something releases in the last breaths
before sleep, as I recall my brother,
without a sound, handing me a new
ball glove. I oiled it until it turned
black, until it was rag-loose
and ready to snap around a grounder.
Tomorrow, without thought, I’ll shift
to make space when we meet for coffee
and you won’t say anything and won’t
even look but sit down and push
a book toward me, or no book at all,
just your hands, opening before us.
—Submitted on 02/06/2021
Michael Lauchlan is the author of Trumbull Ave (Wayne State University Press, 2015). His poems have appeared in New England Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The North American Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Sugar House Review, and other journals.
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Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993.
