The body’s tense shoulder, its skin in a slip
with its mouth full of ribbons ––
How it sways with rain.
Slow coming on, the low horn –– same, same.

The stammering squeal of rail and wheel rising,
the face framed in reflection ––
The flash in the retina ––
A scattering, clouds, etcetera ––

The exit and smell of wet steel, the perforating flash
of white woods –– the elongated cry of the cat ––
the mind’s relent, gather, slack ––
Its penchant for rain ––

– Bevil Townsend

Author’s Note: This poem, among others, is an elegy for my late father and they come from a longer manuscript, Birdsong and Buckshot: An Elegiac Echo. I worked to construct these mellifluous poems through both traditional and invented forms to echo the bodily constraints the speaker experiences here in the physical world. Her rupture is the elegiac rupture. Here, the echo of memory confronts the father’s absence from the present moment.  My intent was to disrupt the lyric, but at the same time, to use the lyrical nature of the elegiac tradition as a constraint for the poems. I hope readers enjoy them.