Carl Phillips

Does it matter how festive it was, the setting out for far country,

the horses, their chestnut flanks, their eyes the color of black basil,

which is purple, really? Now just skulls where a face used to be,

shameless, as in bereft of shame finally, each catching the snow

gently but differently, the snow, and the wind scattering it, as if



unapparent meant nonexistent. They say language has its own sorrow,

but no word for it: does this crying out maybe come close, though,

can we say it does, to have stared into the dark and said aloud, even

if quietly, Who’s there? Anyone around? Panicking too late, as is

the way with panic, the killer stumbles through woods and a snowfall



that feels like ritual and a release from ritual, so that it also feels –

at first, anyway – like being lost, but free. Beneath the pines, the two

horses stood exactly where he’d left them untethered hours ago. Snow

dusted their fine bodies. Nightmare. Nightmare Lifting. Their names

swim up to him. I remember, now. Yes. Now it’s all coming back.

And then just like that, with hardly anyone

noticing, it became daily harder to remember when

this sense of being at sea had begun – at sea, as in

on a wave of doubt mixed with fear and yet no small

amount, incongruously, of fevered anticipation, not joy

itself but the belief, still – the half-belief – some joy

might come. Maybe

                                  the beginning doesn’t matter anyway –

whatever wasn’t the case once, it’s the case now, long

days of jazz and drinks named after jazz, Give me a John

Coltrane, someone saying; another, I’ll take one more

round of these Take Fives…Not that there aren’t

those who suspect the headiness of this new weather

will soon enough dissipate, the holler-and-buzz

surrounding it will follow suit. We’re alike in that way,

you and I – comrades, if you will, in our shared

suspicion, whether you know it yet or not, says

the captain to the young man across the room,

who of course can’t hear him because the captain has

only said this to himself, not aloud yet. He looks at

the young man,

                           who hasn’t yet seen the captain. It’s as if

he’s trying not to look. Look at me, thinks the captain. And

the young man’s head starts to turn toward him. Any

moment he’ll see the captain for the first time. The way

all histories begin, apparently. What destroys finding

what will be destroyed, though which is which has yet to be

determined. Almost lavender, the captain’s eyes are, in this light.