Thayer Anderson

What I need is a simple algorithm  
for hearing myself.

I must learn to talk  
as the birds talk amongst themselves.
   
I sit beside you facing the sea.  
Hold the shell. Press it to your ear.


Beyond, a field: dry  
grass, the yellow suggests

green. Directionless action,  
thought pouring out

from your body. Take the shell.  
This is just sound. Just

memory — circled twice by cords,  
your face contorted, your crying

for your children, the recognition  
of another, finally,

after all this time, at once with  
such force, silence

then the abrupt departure  
of silence. Cloud-cover,

soaking rain. Soaking  
wet. The sea washes,

then eddies, spray caught  
in spray. Coming home,

I walk out back and
study the far side of my house.

The wall deflects light, and light springs  
back from the wall in rhythm.


How can it be turned so much, mid-flight,  
in the last glittering moment? Nothing

is a circuit in the way we try to believe —  
as if the whole wheel turns at once.

What hunts us from the past  
rises toward us, demanding

the thing bargained for. We cannot both  
make it out. Sometimes, I wish it weren’t

me. I still remember your face. The wind taps  
on my home. The rays dissolve

in my eye, dissolve in a flurry of  
color, and everything is birds,

your pink mouth is just birds.

Thayer Anderson

Thayer Anderson

Poetry

Summer 2019

LAOCOON