Poetry
Cage
For Jonathan Williams, In Memoriam
Jeremy Halinen
How the moment the bars seemed most solid,
least a mirage, and the lock, unpickable,
I'm still a person, I think, I thought, cagey,
irresolute—and surely someone would have
said yes, had I asked. We never said goodbye;
like two fireflies that at night, to two men
drinking whiskey on the rocks, seem awhile
not what they are but helicopters lurching, uncannily,
above distant hills, we were the whiskey
in each glass, we were the rocks, receding,
diluting the whiskey, the blood in the men,
we were closer, more fragile, than we thought.