When something happens more than once...
a man stooping down to get a wrench or screwdriver
for fixing something, the fixing a nebulous school
of fish cast out of their home reef to wander to where
water appears in the rain drops of a broken windshield
and this happens just as the man fixing things looks
up and down into the drying water drops from skies
to see the fish again, now microscopic, smaller than
fish are when life is free of menace, he sees they see
him standing there and believe him to be a woman.
These are the signs of life, the glad testimonies
brought back by the dead when they are born again
to people who have not had the time nor the teachers
to learn stories that became great before the end came
and death was all there was of life, before everything
became new. Now all is new, time again for myths,
for naming the things we do so we forget our actions
until frames of the meaningless claim their meaning.
Afaa Michael Weaver‘s 12th collection of poetry won the 2014 Kingsley Tufts Award. His other honors include three Pushcarts, a Fulbright, a Pew fellowship, an NEA, and the May Sarton Award. In playwriting he was awarded the PDI award from ETA Creative Arts Foundation. He did his graduate work in Brown’s writing program. Afaa teaches at Simmons College and in the Drew U MFA program. Visit Afaa’s website: www.afaaweaver.net