ταλάντατος talantatos ~ one “who has to bear much”
Twenty-six years after your death,
you still visit me in dreams,
holding out an empty bowl, gesturing
toward a tree whose branches keep
receding. I don’t know what these
visitations mean, don’t know what kind
of fruit continues to escape your reach.
I don’t know if this is a parable
about how desire is never sated, not even
in death— Your mouth opens and closes:
distraught fish, urgent semaphore. Bone-
white flash of light blinking its message
from the other side. When I was young
I wondered what it would feel like to be
pushed to the front of the line, to take
a turn offering a shoulder for the gods
to gnaw on. To stand in a pool of water,
thirsty for what I still can’t name.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.