Three Poems by D.S. Waldman

Before the Airport

The estuary’s flat today    blue as
the eyes you’ve turned from me      The moments pass
restrained    outside the hours    whole lives arcing
over us and our torn bloom      You’re watching
the egrets    white and fulgent    and breath evades
you when you see one land      So light    it wades
into the shallows without riffling or
wrinkling the delicate  glassy order
of things      I want to talk    to see the half-
smile you allow me    to hear you laugh
But New York’s been good to you    and now the old
tilt of the head ’n wink feels like a role
I’m playing    delaying the long sigh    short walk
back through the dunes      Your book is in the truck
Sappho    I’ve woken up with her thinking
she could be you  or you could be waiting
for me    knee-deep out in the flats    White dress
over your redwood skin    A wayward tress
of tawny hair asking me to tuck it
behind your ear    But  his name is Garrett
He teaches at Columbia      I’ve heard
of him  which carves me up    (German shepherd
in the water now    chasing an egret
to flight)      I try to kiss you and regret
it    I admire you    you say    but I
don’t love you      A jet tears low through the sky
and  I’m ill  picturing the two of you
fucking  on a quilt he got in Peru
or  wherever he went on his Fulbright
You look at me with kindness I can’t quite
return      All but one of the egrets has
flown now    The last  its legs like spindly masts

is still   so still I think it must be fake

So, how’s the weather up in Maine?

I could have said    Blazed open azure skies
Just enough wind to lick the spindrift off
the breakers      I could have said    Matty  I’m
off the wagon again      You know it’s tough
to say “no” on vacation    am I right?
I could have said    Fine    or    The days are soft
and free of ambition      But no    this time
I saw your text and was just too damn sloshed
to text you back      This threadbare life      I did
not know you would slip into a coma
overnight      Or    come morning    that I would still
be drunk    speaking my last words to you o-
ver the phone    the phone Mom held to your ear
I didn’t know      How dare I go on breathing

How dare I wake  and walk  and take up space
on earth      I turn 29 tomorrow
A year older than you were that day
that September day      A year older now
than my older brother             And the word shame
is just a fleck of grey in the fat cloud
of autumn      There’s so much I have to say
now     Sometimes  late at night    I dial your old
number  just to push against this cage
I scratch your name into the live oaks
and in the low-tide sand          Strange how vacant
words are when nothing will do      Yet I go
on      Matty      with no one listening      I’m so
sorry      like the tide      so sorry      and on I go

Thanksgiving

In memory of Tommy Carl Cable

The last hour
of the evening  fire
crackling in slow descent

Glasses stained
with whiskey and red wine

a long quiet

boggy stillness

each of us waiting
for a reason to walk
out into the dark wind
of near-winter

The La-Z-Boy sits empty
empty all night

the leather worn by
the most ordinary
of rituals

Well  that’s a wrap

says no one    and no one
gets up    and no one walks
out under the stars

D.S. Waldman is a writer based in San Diego, California.  Winner of the 2019 Foothill Editors’ Prize, and runner-up for the 2019 New Writers Story Prize, his work has most recently appeared in Foothill,  San Diego Poetry Annual, and Kissing Dynamite. He holds a B.A. from Middlebury College.