COMING NIGHT

It darkens brother
and your crutch tip grinds
the gravel the deer stepped delicately along
one breakfast, you were a kid.
Mother says after thirty
decades clip by
“and then you have the sum”
or spent it.
What was it like when the car
swerved on the ice,
what did you think of,
how long did you wait
in the wreck with the pain?
I see the sumacs by the turning space
turn their lank leaves,
the railway moves to us
and the willows below us
and think of you turning nineteen,
of the deer, the sumac, trains, a wreck.

James Schuyler

(Portrait by Darragh Park)
link: Exit, pursued by a bear