Aubade
for Nadia
The fog like a filter
of Heaven falling. All things
this same shade of persistence.
I assure myself I will guide
your eyes to the day’s imperfections:
the jonquils wilting
like onion petals, the frosting
layers of mud. I am beating
my courage to my chest for this
rainbowing, this umbrella
inside I lay before you.
I am nailing my theses
to the church door of you.
The ashes on your face remain
like unstamped letters, waiting.
Later, when you are gone
again, I will dirty
a dish, wash it, dirty it
again. I will see your face
in these soap stains;
and this is how I know
these austere offices are full
of all the words I have
not said, have instead
molded into your eyes like vases
waiting to leave the kiln once more.
***
it is easy to sail before the wind
It is early November and I am waiting
for an end: each falling
leaf a testament, each nautical flock
a migration of weightlessness.
This sullen hull is breaking
down: the starboard planks all algaefied,
the port all drunk with nets and days.
The fabric of this sail: a casting off, a ploy.
Each old gust of chilled September:
these flotsam memories awash,
these jetsam lights, these northern colding stars,
these open looms of rain—these undone double stitches.
Somewhere they evacuate my body: the life-boats
fill, the sails catch wind. December is every broken wish.
J.M. Gamble is currently a student at the University of Alabama. His poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Ninth Letter (Online), PANK, elimae, Word Riot, and others. His chapbook, And This Blank Card, was published in April 2013 by Chantepleure Press, and is available now.
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