We Mourn

Jeanine Walker

We mourn the start of light,

the green grass bared naked

by the afternoon sun,

the way your hands chafe

by the wooden handle of the clippers

and mine by this fray

of nylon rope that ties the tire

into a swing. We mourn

the far-off mountains

and the nearby woods

in which the long secret

of what I could never have

and the various versions

of body I gave up

stay squatted beneath a rock,

behind the parted tree, not visible

in the picture you took, too dark

in there. But the darkness

knows more than the light,

so we mourn the light, with all

the harshness it inflicts on us,

with its overbearing wish

to be good.

Jeanine Walker is the author of The Two of Them Might Outlast Me (2022). She has received writing fellowships from Artist Trust, The Jack Straw Cultural Center, Wonju, UNESCO City of Literature, and Inprint. Her poems have been published in Bennington Review, New Ohio Review, Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere, and a translation of Korean poet Ahn Joo Cheol’s work is forthcoming from Poetry Northwest. A poet with a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from the University of Houston, Jeanine is a long-time poetry teacher and most recently has taught English at Kangwon National University in Chuncheon, Korea.