Crescent

MICHAEL BURKARD

CRESCENT

There is nothing you want to encourage. If there is an

inheritor-those distractions that seem to arrive with

the evening train that still arrives-there are so

many boxes. Any of this is more or less a beginning-

you wanted the night sky itself to be the other half

of the crescent, less the frosted trees

might afford. Or so they thought. Night shift. And so

those who leave-you hear their voices in the stairwell-

take you with them as you go-but afford is a terrible

term for it, as it remains outside the concern the

trees sought, as you viewed them. Looking away revealed

the train to be nowhere in sight, any attempt

stuttering. This is what you want to say

once and for all: each narrative is duration, neither more

neither less, and each diminishes to itself, their

own small probabilities and slants-the motion however

suggests

only that, leaving the terms of it behind, as if they were

necessary.

It was, and if so it was because more difficult tasks

were taken: death for instance, just there as it is,

and drowning. But these tales

would only move through their lights slowly, and each

passing

could in turn return a former passing, and so on until you

would give the turning a point, and

even that term cannot distinguish it. It is like the term

ledge-

spied near the hemlock, shaking

and turning the scene farther in.