the fall of a boy at duck pond.
the fall of a boy at duck pond.
by Garland Middleton
although today is better, my dear, yesterday and all the yesterdays before it were all but better. they fell down. each day. starting with friday and continuing through to the following friday. the fight. the fall. the surgery. the coma. the death. the quills. the bill. the hot compress.
and nothing can fix them. not even my mom. not even a drink or a cigarette. there is only time that can heal them and time that can kill the pain that is growing. the guilt in their heads. the reasons for laughing and reasons for shouting. they all blend together in one particular type of hum. the hum of the dead ones the hum of the woken ones the hum of the girl running from porcupines. the town with the big guns and the one with the office next to the river. that office will do whatever it takes to stop all the bleeding and get those things out of his head. and just like the full moon, things can start over but we’re all still hungover from yesterday’s dead.
Remarkable. Horrible. Really gets to you. All of it comes from the title, which precipitates the boy’s death. The periods give the lower-case run-on “hum” deadening emphasis: “the fight. the fall.” etc. The only commas offset “my dear” at the beginning–a poignant throwaway consolation–and the phrase at the end, which takes no solace from the recurring cycles of the moon. Despite yesterday’s tranquilization, rationality, emotion, and civilized effort, today isn’t that much better, making “all the yesterdays before it…all but better.” Time will help only by a slow act of death: a healing that kills “the pain that is growing. the guilt in their heads.” The poem blends everything together in an oppressive monotony, as in Macbeth’s “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” soliloquy.