Elegy with Arrows by William Fargason

In the near-dark of the suburban street lights 

coming on, my father sits hunched in his garage, 

refletching an arrow clamped on the workbench 

he built. The carbon-black shaft of the arrow 

is a letter he writes under the small desk light

dulled by cowled spider webs. His own father

has just died, he does not talk about this more

than letting me know. Classic rock plays 

on the silver radio in the corner. He is again lost 

in the dream a project allows him, he is

asleep standing up. I do not interrupt him,

but I watch when he spins the bar of the clamp vice 

to loosen the arrow, and as he holds, then removes 

the thing slowly, letting the light catch

the new glue he just piped on. He picks

up a bright orange nock between his fingers

like a communion wafer or an offering,

and readies it for the next arrow, then the next.

William Fargason is the author of Love Song to the Demon-Possessed Pigs of Gadara (University of Iowa Press, 2020), winner of the 2019 Iowa Poetry Prize and the 2020 Florida Book Award in Poetry (Gold Medal). His poetry has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Prairie Schooner, New England Review, Barrow Street, Indiana Review, The Cincinnati Review, Narrative, and elsewhere. He earned an MFA in poetry from the University of Maryland and a PhD in poetry from Florida State University. He is the poetry editor of Split Lip Magazine. He lives with himself in Sparks Glencoe, Maryland.

20 September 2021