New Hampshire and its bone-break winters—slush, soot, and the bright,
bright air she walked me through. A stone bridge, pretty enough once
for a postcard, in scaffolding since May.
Ours was a college town
whose lone stop light blinked red against the back wall
of her threadbare efficiency with its drifting mattress, ball jars, brushes
and her paints spilt like legs across the floor.
Out of the heater’s syrupy hiss
our long vowels naked and pressed together, “Blue in Green,” the last verse
of Buckley’s “Hallelujah,” dinners and a walk along the river.
Blessed, I think, are the ferry & the ferried. The harbor & the carried.
Blessed, I think, are the ones who aren’t the ones who got away, but will linger
nonetheless, brightly, like a kiss on the cheek, like a song without a chorus,
certain songs with a chorus so slight
you almost miss them. Never enough, but enough.
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Adam Grabowski’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as New Ohio Review, Blackbird, Bracken, and elsewhere. The recipient of a Parent-Writer Fellowship from the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, Adam lives in Western Massachusetts, where he is a special education teacher and the associate poetry editor of The Maine Review.