by W.F. Lantry

” “… and I must run to be with my own band”
~Dante, Inferno, Canto XV

Walls. Low park hills. Tree limbs wrestling
our sun to this earth. Scarred branches
above me, weeping tillandsias
who live on nothing, on air.

Running. My legs grow heavy as Daphne’s.
Now three miles left. Dazed rhythms
of ridiculous motion, mockingbirds
changing into grackles, or one voice-

Stephen’s, through this silence, (three years dead)
his words, from beaks, past oak leaves, to my ears:
“Rat-Bite-Fever plays white walls,
swigs bourbon, while the schoolhouse burns.”

Stephen loafing, drunk, where this path curves,
holds out a bantam rooster as baton.
It struggles from my hand, and disappears –
trees end. I run on nothing, on air.

A broken tape ahead, no steps behind:
better dead last than second. Those terse words
on strange wings tremble, shudder, as my legs
recalling how to walk, cross a white line.

 
W.F. LANTRY works inside the Beltway, but drives every night to the Northwest Branch of the Anacostia River where his wife sometimes makes him take his five year old to Mass: “Victimae Paschali Laudes” actually happened exactly as described. During the present academic year his poems have been published in 11 separate and unique countries, including Texas, both in print and online. He currently serves as the Director of Academic Technology at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.