Thursday, October 27
MEDITATION AT TOCCOA FALLS
The Irish poet
Patrick Kavanagh
once rhymed
weather with father—
just like my friend
Ortiz once called
Vick’s Vapor Rub
bi-ba-poru,
or like the smokers
whose term hashish,
over centuries,
became assassin.
It’s true:
some words
are elegy
to what they signify,
but others
summon the dead
exactly
as they spoke,
like grainy voices
on a gramophone
that plays
inside our throats.
(Patrick Phillips)