After Han Kang’s We Do Not Part

 

ginkgo

After Han Kang’s We Do Not Part 

 

When do you think they turned to stone?

The moment they looked back?  Or do you think it took

a little more time?

                        Han Kang

                        We Do Not Part

for Katie L.

 

They’ve gone to chalk again, the rocks.

The color I mean.  All summer they were

dun dust & mud, unearthed as they were

 

from their slumber.  A broke open exhumation. 

Cold dark, I think I see, I want to see

a spark come up when it hits another – I

 

hurl them the way I was taught

to hurl medicine balls, from the gut

to the gut.  The way it is caught, the way

 

it takes, because of the weight, the breath

that’s made there, beneath the skin & bone,

two lobes, like the open half of a walnut, still

 

attached.  Listen: the trunk of the dead

honeysuckle was at last letting go its hold

and is no more, though her roots, all those

 

years in that dark, were able to cable

around every broken stone & cradle them

like a mother cradles her first baby: afraid

 

but not afraid in the sense anyone

who is not a mother would be able to

appreciate.  There’s something

 

worth sanctifying that isn’t yet itself,

that once it comes to light after being

so long earthed, draws its first

 

visible fire, opens one then the other

hand & lets the world fall

into it, holding it up entirely

 

on its own when those five fingers

curl around her five fingers

& bring life again to stone.