I can only tell you what I’ve found:
the snowstorms snorted up through straws,
the hips in bars that sway with what they’ll give,
the burdens balanced on our brows,
the after-party darkness
and the candles lit beside the beds, the eyes
sunken from the fire burning forever
between our legs.
I always knew what I was running from:
the steam shovels and the smokestacks
spewing soot across the snowy Christmas scenes
we resurrected by the river bank
each December, on the ice-covered patch
of lawn beside the Rescue Squad
where I sang carols as a boy.
I went to find something I never had:
First, I faltered in a cornfield, where a young girl
braided her hair with yellow cornsilk.
Then I spent whole afternoons in silence,
weeping at the edge a cliff above the Pacific,
on a skinny isthmus jutting out, perched to see
where the white guano bleached
an enormous offshore rock, smothered in birds.
The air filled with shrieking.
At times it settled, and brown pelicans flew by
at eye level. I played guitar, badly,
and sang with my back to the wind.
The gusts would carry my voice away.
And when I looked down,
into the incessant hiss of waves
receding from the rocks, I contemplated grace,
and the holiness of the place, the thing I came for,
always waiting at the very end
of the tricky path that takes me there.
Michael Sofranko, a professor, writer, editor, and poet, attended the Writers Workshop at University of Iowa, and the PhD program at the University of Houston. His collection of poetry, American Sign, received the Antonio Machado Prize, and his work has appeared in many literary journals. He lives in Houston, Texas.
© 2024, Michael Sofranko
Halfway Down the Stairs 