Daylight Savings
John Howard
These are the days shortening
down to the length of time it takes
to run the lake in the early hours of dusk
when the water goes pink to match
the pinks of a sunless sky. Days going
shorter for the coming of fall, for
leaves bleeding into bold colors,
for branches made bare, for winter,
for snow and sleet and ice that will
come to lay down on and into
the ground in places other than this–
This little stretch of the Bay I have
called home for a bit now, where,
if we are lucky this year, the rains
will continue to come when nature
intends for them to come. But some-
times luck of that sort leads to fires
like the ones we had north of here
just a few weeks ago, fires swept up
by winds so fast and fierce they
devoured thousands of buildings
and two neighborhoods whole
and a few dozen lives and would
have kept on devouring if it weren’t
for the fight against kindling
the firemen raged. Call it chaparral,
call it fescue, call it wrong. Tall grasses
whose names escape us growing
alongside power lines in the gold-tinged
foothills. Call it what you will, the smell
of smoke is not unlike the sound you
hear by the lake when jogging beneath
the Terrace Room wedding as bride
and groom are announced for the first
time–their names drowned out by
applause and cheers and screams.
Screams that recede into near-silence
as you run, taking comfort in the coots
trailing each other in pairs to cross
that expanse of pink water. Lugubrious lines
their black-feathered bodies leave behind,
making the word ‘wake’ seem almost
too perfect when hearing the wedding music
again, as shoreline and promenade bend
back towards that ongoing celebration.
Sound and smell trigger memories of
a kind you wish to forget. Until you
realize the sorrow of such losses,
until (trying to take comfort in
the silly sounds coots trumpet out
or the sudden re-emergence of a
double-breasted cormorant diving
beneath the surface in search of
nourishment)
you let your mind return to those
few campfires you shared and the
sounds and shape of your own small
wedding and to a vision of your wife
naked in the shower. She is rubbing
shampoo into her scalp and calls out
to ask if you are going to join her
as was your custom, your daily routine,
to which you answer by undressing,
sliding the glass divider open,
stepping in alongside her, letting water
hit your body, the vague scent of camp-
fire smoke lingering on your skin
before soap and suds and the argan
oil of Morocco that you too will rub
into your hair, recalling all of this
until realizing that she is no longer
your wife, that these artifacts–barbed
and prickly and painful to the touch–are
nothing
more than kindling to feed the small
fires you must light to bear the loss
and to keep fragments of yourself
alive in the dark.
John T. Howard is Assistant Director for the Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and serves as a Writer-in-Residence at Wellspring House Retreat. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Indiana University, and he is at work on a collection of short stories and a first novel.