Poem: Watching the Young Dead Play (For Darrell Porter)

When you bounded into Sutter’s arms,
It now seems the very instant of an ascension
Of a man who brushed his burst fingers against the endurable
Only when he was ashamed.

You can do this, we know, this hitting, catching, running.
But it’s the after — the plenteous and undetailed after,
The quiet after
That you’ll always belong to.

If you could only see us seeing you, urging you
On before the hot lights and champagne,
Your words as simple as you could never hope to be.
Your words, like your swing, quavering on the hinges of a pinfold.

Come back to this game and be cloaked again,
You and that lunging, halting, hoping swing —
That motel Gideon’s Bible of a swing.
Just be anything but Sugar Creek dead.

See us. See us with
Each lens less a lens than a deep-water amphitheater
That harbored a sunken eye,
That conspired to let no one quite know

What it all looked like to Darrell Ray.