April represents National Poetry Month, intended as a way to spread awareness and appreciation of poetry in the United States. To celebrate, each week we will be taking a look back at ZYZZYVA’s recent and distant past to share some choice selections. For our final installment, we present “Little Key” by Joshua Rivkin from Issue No. 103:
Hopes are shy birds flying at a great distance, seldom reached by the best
of guns, Audubon wrote in his journal thinking
not of the hawk or the wren but of course the sparrow. An animal throat
untwists the shadow of your name. Song replying to song replying to
song.
You stand in a clearing beside a frozen lake. Here, years ago, you found
a whale’s collarbone washed clean to shore, lightened by hard weather,
ounce less ounce, its castle walls cracked and caved
and consider this a warning we’re free to ignore about ravishing
possession or bodies in time. Think of lemons asleep on a windowsill;
think the isthmus of a man’s collarbone.
Hope, we say, and mean not bird but his call, echoing hill to tide, the
rattle, the relay, the soul’s ready radio. How many calls to count. You
could count and never stop. You could try.
Joshua Rivkin’s poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, VQR, and elsewhere. You can read more of his poetry in Issue No. 103.