Etude, February 16 by Ed Ruzicka

Etude, February 16

The rain drifts light
as six mosquitos’ feet.
Under this monolith
of a sky, leaves and grass
can’t even get enough
light to glisten.

I work alone in a room
I built to work alone, room
detached from the house.

Dust clouds from crumpled high-rises
in Ukraine, Syria, Turkey,
Payton Gendron’s face at his trial
where he shed crocodile tears,
all infiltrate the scratchy
branches of trees.

Yesterday hospice
came into the house
with my sister. Gave her
a hospital bed that folds,
a mattress accomplished
in cradling death.

I twine syllables, marry
fire to words, note how
slender birds’ throats are,
try to understand what bonds
make the sea and men
stay so agitated.

I tap, strike, hold
an inconsolable
sequence of letters
in the key of e-minor

inside a landscape
whose horizon ends
on this line

and stay haunted by what
I can not get right.

by Ed Ruzicka

Editor’s Note: This poem begins with an image that lingers, even as the speaker’s inner monologue shows the reader how difficult it is to focus in the midst of life’s painful moments.