Traveler
Amy Williams
The cerulean back of the lake turns darker at night. Black
spruce and jack pine stretch across its glass skin.
A loon floats above the craggy, conical tips of the trees,
his head tilted, calling.
It’s the sound of loneliness, bathing the sky,
the wail of animal longing
the same when I was a child
and someone shot my poor cat.
He lay outside, calling. His sonorous
moan was visceral and full.
A summoning, like grief,
like my grandmother who was wide-eyed,
unready, I could hear it:
the hollow lamentation of the forsaken.
All the ways we say “wanting.”
All the ways we try.
The loon turns his head as if to regard me,
then swoops into the ink-black water.
The soundless sky yawns wide
and I wish I could say “come be with me,”
howl like the loon who emerges from the deep,
dark and shining and searching.
Behold this grief. Behold
this gnarled, diurnal longing.
Amy Williams writes and works in New Delhi, India. She usually writes about education and feminist issues but is garnering the courage to revive more creative pursuits. She holds Masters degrees in English and Teaching.