Far From the Field

Jeffery Allen Tobin

The roads are orderly, as they must be,

threading the city with their silent decree.

The lamps burn on, immune to grief,

each one a governor over shadow.

Your voice, once a casual certainty,

has retreated beyond the ledgered hours,

folded into the archive of lost things:

a coat left swinging on its peg,

a cup cooling on the morning table.

Far from the field where your hands once gathered

the summer’s high-piled hours,

time resumes its usual commerce—

postmen passing with their tired boots,

windows flicking their lashes at dusk.

The town, that anxious little clerk,

files away your name with indifference,

and yet, some small rebellion lingers:

the chair where you sat refuses its vacancy,

a door hesitates before closing.

No elegy will summon you back.

No plea will turn the clocks to mercy.

Yet somewhere, perhaps, a river still holds

the shape of your hand in its moving glass,

and the wind, when startled, stammers your name.