*

Poet David Daniel grew up in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Daniel has taught at Emerson College in Boston, where he served as editor of Ploughshares. He is the director of undergraduate creative writing at Farleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey.

L to R: David Daniel, Doug Holder

Meltaway

We made this out of rain because we had rain to work with

Because this is a kind of forgetful remembrance—

A commemoration of rain’s wearing away,

Its rumble and roar, its sizzle on streets, its splat

On the down of a young boy’s arm, the far-falling

In far fields: they whisper as they drink down

What drives up the green growing to our mouths:

We say, Everything turns into everything else. We stand in the far fields,

We look up at the glass sky and say, Terrarium. We say, I see the sketch

You fingered on the glass, a constellation of war. It falls like fire

From a sparkler we waved once. Then we dig down to find

What we’ve left behind, what feeds us, and there’s a note we wrote:

I was here, in the rain, and so were you. We were lovers and said,

Rain is only rain when it’s falling: this is our falling time. Beside the note:

Hair tangled with root, a candy wrapper, a muscle car idling, filled

With limestone, slick with seep, its lovers filled with sleep: these things

We left so your soul has someplace to go when we go in the rain.

We made this out of rain because we had rain to work with,

Because it’s not a choice: Who are we?, we said once. I am America,

This is my house—it is voice-activated. It is electric eye.

It is American Dream. Feel the current running through my wrist…

Then rain came, and the meltaway, and the past rose from the fields

As the fields gave way to rain: our heads first, then shoulders, rose—

The mud-clothed, lanky soldiers of us, the jack pine cones

That need fire to crack open and seed, the ambered dragonfly

And the ambered fern. Who are we?, we said then.

— David Daniel

________________________________________

To have your work considered for the Lyrical send it to:
Doug Holder, 25 School St.; Somerville, MA 02143
dougholder@post.harvard.edu