Heading
South
by
Jeffrey Owen Pearson
As
the plane skirts the coast heading south
to
Ft. Lauderdale, I fool myself into seeing a marlin
leap
from the ocean and, for a moment,
look
me in the eye as if something holy.
Because
all things are holy.
From
this height I see the blurring of sea and land.
Of
a place where people struggle for footholds.
I
know who loses this game.
Because
we all always lose in the end.
When
my feet hit the tarmac I already feel
foreign.
Like a soldier who retreats from death
or
will be swallowed.
I
have come to claim the dead. Whose atoms
will
soon mingle into the fire of a last sunset.
How
odd the familiarity of gray streets
moaning
in the rising mist after a rain shower.
The
tangle of unusual trees and boulevard names.
The
unfriendly neighborhood facades
with
no one I know. Easy in, easy out,
they
say. Except the way grief sticks everywhere.
Like
gum stuck on the pavement, cooking
in
the sun. Sweet but spit out for the only reason
I
know. I’ve become too accustomed to its taste.
From
Jeffrey Owen Pearson: “I
began writing a tribute to Jay Zimmerman, who grew up in Florida, but
the poem kept turning to my son, who died there. 'Heading South' is heavy with both.”