Rivering

by Michael Lauchlan

L’avenir est comme le reste: il n’est plus ce qu’il était.  Paul Valery
 

I thought I understood time,

how a day began at five,

how I began in 1954

after the war and before

the war and during the war

my father fought alone each night,

like everyone else–

how day began while night

still rang in our heads–how night

rushed us to close up roofs

before the gray above 

exploded furious and wet. 

Night promised so much. 

I thought time rivered on 

under my little raft, 

thought to wash up 

midway in the journey

on some post industrial isle

to confront three beasts

and be saved by Beauty–

or ride out into the gales

of the wide lakes where

great ships seek the sea.

I thought, like everyone else,

to see grandchildren enter a world. 

But time preys on small craft 

and fills arteries and rots 

cartilage and scrambles the words 

by which we’d make a claim 

on all the floods to come.

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Michael Lauchlan has contributed to many publications, including New England Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The North American Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Sugar House Review, Louisville Review, and Poet Lore, Southern Poetry Review, and Poetry Ireland. His most recent collection is Trumbull Ave., from WSU Press (2015).