Line of Sight
If one bright morning I watched from a tower in Boston and saw the tip of Monadnock a faint blue in the rough density of atmosphere
And if you stood on its highest ridge looking back at edges of cityscape barely visible amid the sea’s sweet breath
And if you turned and started your climb down the further side to Dublin trailhead
We could live out our lives and honestly pretend we’d never seen each other
Squam Lake
It never could have happened under these same impossible orange beech trees that shade me from the tepid autumn heat.
Everything was orange – is orange: the light reflected in the lake, the distant sail reflected into the butterfly shape
of an orange monarch, flashing like your walk, like the fantasy of your hair that makes an invasive appearance,
a spurious guest fully prepared with alibi, alias, and multiple biographies that could never withstand detailed scrutiny.
The lake breaks through my obscurities illuminating a provisional evening. I crouch into my resistant knees touching its wetness
making this moment real, still, and always without you, filling my lifetime with discarded moments that never could have happened.
Keith Herndon—“I’m a part-time yoga instructor and I have been writing poetry with help and advice from a workshop community since 2021.”