Elegy, and Myth

Abstract

Elegy, and Myth Christopher Bakken (bio) Elegy Your shoes were muddy from the graves, so you left them out by the hitching post. Those mornings before we vanished, like the horse. That day’s rain rinsed pollen from the air and you said you could finally breathe. Lilies were burning up there. You held up three you’d cut for me to see, then left them on the table when you went. In a wooden box by the window, I hid the black ribbon you used to tie your braid. I couldn’t bear to pick it up that day. Something of your body still singed the air. At night, you also burned: dreams of lilies, horses, earth filling around us. A centaur appeared in one, wearing my head. I woke before it had a chance to speak. Then today: a hoof-print outside the door where you’d been walking. Or I had been. It was hard to tell if we lived. Either way, one of us had galloped back after years of not being anywhere. We had wanted so many years to be. This piece of broken rope said that was true. [End Page 68] Myth On the stove, greens she stole from the mountain. She gave an hour to pulling them apart. Steam rose from the pot, pleasing the invisible. He sat with his book by the back window, reading the horizon for lightning: stormy watches bringing the dark ship light. Some ancient sentence broken on the page. Outside, rain punished the earth for its crimes. No, she said, the earth bore none of the guilt. Proving it didn’t care, a crow complained to the cypress tree on behalf of all birds. Three lemons on guard atop their blue plate. Below the house, the sea surged into a cave. No, she said again, the cave opened to the sea. [End Page 69] Christopher Bakken Christopher Bakken’s third book of poetry, Eternity & Oranges, is forthcoming from the Pitt Poetry Series. He is also the author of Honey, Olives, Octopus: Adventures at the Greek Table (University of California Press, 2013), a book of travel writing. Copyright © 2015 Middlebury College Publications