Michael Hettich

The Gloaming

On my walk to town, I came across the body
of an animal mangled so badly I couldn’t
tell what it was, wrapped around itself
and gutted, its lips pulled back in a smiling
grimace, eyeless, dark-furred, the size
of a large dog—maybe a coyote, or even 

a bear. It lay in the switch-grass
next to a just-built fence where a row
of gleaming, brand-new houses waited
for people to fill them. A few crows cawed
from the weed-trees; the highway hummed in the distance
and the day grew chilly as the light began to fade. 

Across the street, a man raked leaves
while a woman gestured, laughing. They waved
as I walked on, newly alert to my own
frail body, as night started falling
in earnest around me, and the first stars started
to poke through the gloaming. I remember crying
into the private silence after 

my father told me his bedtime stories
of forests and children getting hopelessly lost,
then finding the uneaten crumbs on the path,
seeing that warm-looking cottage through the trees,
the old woman waving at the window like a wing,
opening the heavy door: Come in, come in... 

Forgiveness

Late that afternoon, we came across a dinghy
pulled up on shore, hidden under branches,
battered and almost too heavy to slide
into the water. No oars. We pushed off

and floated out into the stillness, as evening
started to darken the woods and grain
the light on the water. We drifted, at peace
with each other for the first time, it seemed, in weeks, 

and we laughed our forgiveness. Only then
did we realize the leaking boat, filling
with water, would soon be submerged. As we stood
up to our knees in that chilly water

a voice called across the evening, like someone
from a dream we were dreaming together. I called it
a loon, and she smiled: I didn’t really know.
Then we slipped, fully dressed, into the water 

and swam to shore through the darkness, pulling
the sunk boat behind us, surrounded by the billions
of stars in the sky and shimmering in the ripples
we made as we swam, laughing, and almost
phosphorescent with joy.

Back to Issue XV…