A Song for Thursday
Brandon Hansen
I haven’t checked the mail in a year. You are getting married
this June and I am not that kind of protagonist lately.
No, I’ve been sitting under street lamps at night
and sometimes the blaze of light burns away as I wait,
washes me in stars. I wish you could see it.
Sometimes I hear the spear
of a black lab barking
and I break my neck to look,
sometimes the pressure of sun
burns these snowbanks and they
bleed all the way to Lake Superior. Sometimes, I wonder
if you’ll be there, at the end
of that dog or somewhere along the stream,
and listen I know
the scream of you in my life has peaked away,
but I find myself grasping at the resounding waves
and I’m sorry.
So take the year. Take longer. Someday let’s collide
again at the cross of Seventh Street,
the shadow of your house.
You’ll ask me how I’m doing,
and I’ll just shrug. You’ll shrug too and say
you’ve had this bear in your stomach
for a while now, then
the porch door will open a notch,
the light will change and we will be
half bright and half not,
the clouds will stop
for a second
and I’ll say
oh, wow.
Everything will move again,
and I’ll say, hey,
I bet he will be
the most beautiful kid.
Brandon Hansen is from a village in northern Wisconsin named Long Lake. He can affirm that, indeed, the lake is long. He also writes.