Response (Cadillac Mountain)

1 Minute Read Time

This blurry photograph shows a mountain in the distance, with the car driving in the road with a surrounding town and condensation from rain blurring the image. — Photo by Alexandra Mirgheș on Unsplash

So you can’t 
be any

comfort—soft 
moon of her joy

folded in rain, the 
dog leading

her by the arm 
to one or other

lichen-flecked green and 
purple stone—

so you
aren’t. You’ll go on.

Watch the small
boats, weightless as dew,

idle in the sound, 
flashing their

points of light.
I’m alive in here.

And need her
to do the same—

her fiery signal 
washed in blue haze.

I did not tell you 
what to need.

This is the season 
at the end. Late

summer, meadows 
poison-bright. Low wind

soothing the mountain trees, 
which seethe with emerald

ash borers inside.
Sparrows squabbling in rain.

And it lifts.
Exhaled in the sound.

The lake below 
suddenly still as gold.

Kingfisher bowing in awe.

You can’t, you know, 
change her

by loving certain 
parts of her

more, others 
less—you knew that.

The dog
rooting in utter stone.

I am sorry
you came all this way.

Aaron Krol

lives with his wife Shannon Wagner in Boston, where they both received their MFAs from Emerson College. His poems can be read in Painted Bride Quarterly, Kenyon Review Online, Cossack Review, Cold Mountain Review, Chautauqua, Cimarron Review, Dogwood, and others. He is the recipient of a 2016 poetry fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Return to top of page

Search