Elegy

What is the death of a stranger 
until they become something more 
like sister, or brother, a name 
I’m not sure I ever knew? 
Why am I asking you this?  
Tonight I met her brother 
at a bar, when we were talking  
I told him my daughters 
were like small tigers. He said 
he had a sister once, but she had drowned.  
The brother was named Hank. He was my age,  
drunk, dark hair, one drink from belligerent  
or an aneurism, both of us 
headed toward our last years.  
It was a bar for old people. I did not 
tell him I was there that day 
I saw them take his sister from the waves. 
It’s a small city. You can just say 
I remember from the paper 
or nothing at all. 
I bought him another round. 
He was drinking straight 7&7. 
Eventually he got loud  
& the bartender kicked him out. 
It was her birthday he had said. 
I played a game of pool by myself, 
recalled how the lifeguards pulled her 
from the waves. 
Then I drove out here under the full moon. 
My son was small then. 
I told him not to look as they pulled her out. 
The big lake tonight is silver & green 
the color of some foreign money. 
I stood on the beach a long time. 
I stopped thinking of the drowned woman. 
I was thinking of my failed marriage, 
my son grown & gone away for work. 
I was thinking the light of the full moon 
reminds me of the light from a prison spotlight 
There was a small wind off the water. 
I am trying to explain something 
I can’t quite get to about loss. 
Sometimes we leave this world  
for no real reason.  We stay for even less. 
Somewhere across the bay I heard a siren. 
So many of us will never be saved. 

Górecki 

Maybe he heard the silence 
on the inside of the music. Birds. 

The inside of the sky. I will give alms. 
The inside of a psalm. The body. 

The inside of the body. 
the one that rises 

no matter what— 

Perhaps he heard the silence 
inside sound. The music 

inside music. The birds 
inside the sky. The alm 

inside a psalm. Body  
inside the body. 

The one that rises 
despite anything— 

SEAN THOMAS DOUGHERTY

Sean Thomas Dougherty is the author or editor of twenty books, including Death Prefers the Minor Keys (forthcoming 2023 BOA Editions) and The Dead Are Everywhere Telling Us Things, winner of the 2021 Jacar Press Full Length book contest, selected by Nickole Brown and Jessica Jacobs. His website is seanthomasdoughertypoet.com.