ITEMS FROM THE WRECKAGE The chant sounded overhead is a rosary of wails pitched upon the sea. Feasting days are over. As bodies, like incantations, return as denial, as disbelief, there is a need between us to act the abandoned child. We must appear as orphans of mothers, of fathers who could not see us except at drink or night brutality. I have spoken to your fears as best I could; taken and turned what I know to some attempt at service. It is never enough. I must seem a fool to attempt a patch upon a part that slips daily, grinding ever finer, ever closer. Feasting days are finished. And we are left consoling our fathers, our mothers weeping in raging lines along the shore. We must take the unkind step to leave them to their grieving. You and I must learn a new answer, another offering to the tides. In movement, past regret, past unspent days and seasons, we will lay claim to our own lives.
About the Author: R.T. Castleberry, a Pushcart Prize nominee, has work in Steam Ticket, Vita Brevis, As It Ought To Be, Trajectory, Silk Road, StepAway, and The River. Internationally, he’s had poetry published in Canada, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, France, New Zealand, Portugal, India, the Philippines and Antarctica. His poetry has appeared in the anthologies: Travois-An Anthology of Texas Poetry, TimeSlice, Anthem: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen, and Level Land: Poetry For and About the I35 Corridor. He lives and writes in Houston, Texas.
Image Credit: Chase Dimock “Flywheel, Oatman” (2023)
As It Ought To Be 