JOSHUA RIVKIN

Harold Street Eclogue

Night of the last party everyone arrives for goodbye.
My roommate hides his scotch in the oven
I turn on without knowing. Foolish you.
Dark smoke coils in the bottle. Our almost Molotov.
He pulls it out and we wait for stressed glass
to hold or break. Our almost . . . The world’s not
burning. You’re safe but you worry, a stone worried
smooth. See what’s left. Drinks in the corners,
plants potted with ash, friends asleep on couches,
floors and beds, their curled shapes in nightclothes
or without clothes and this—what survives
after danger can be made into meaning. Really?
You, always with meaning. You think too much
of yourself. Where’s the heat? Name risk
that’s real. A car burns on the median,
a ship drowns in ocean, an airplane explodes
miles from earth. Too vague. Not enough.
Sing the collapse, the falling, the down.
A bomb-split plane scattered across cornfields
and gleaned by farm boys. In hangars, experts
reassemble a tail, a wing, a nose. Bolt and solder.
Fuse and hammer. A shape remade. All surface.
They want to find the second it went wrong.
The cause. Foolish you. Nothing solved. Almost
and actual do not align, try again. I rewind the clock,
replace a footprint and do not fall. The bottle
unexploded. Clothes scattered, beds filled.
The night ended with a laugh. Another story.