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Garlands or Crowns of, Placed on Mouths of Wells
You don’t want people thinking you’re winging it.
It’s why we write sonnets. Nothing says “I’m not winging it”
quite like a sonnet. And one can appear to be thinking
things through when we arrive at line ten. This would seem
more clever if I were actually at line ten. And if this
were a sonnet. And if there was an objective correlative,
like my favorite rock, that I’m now a rock collector.
Because my father is dying, and everyone can see it,
but it could be years or tomorrow, which is always
the case for all of us, but you get the point.
It takes a long time to get used to an idea. Like, well,
maybe this is a sonnet. But sometimes not long at all,
like when you go to someone else’s house
and everything is more fragile. That’s an easy one.
*
When I visited my father last week, and he couldn’t
get around, he’s tired, why stand, why eat, and he
was throwing away his underwear rather than doing laundry,
and peeing in bottles, he said he liked not seeing people.
I asked him how that was working out for him,
and he gave me a look that said grief can eat anything
and laugh. The world narrows. The gospel of the world
narrows. And my heart is a rock, pulling through my chest.
And here’s the thing about rocks. We’ve all got younger days.
Like sonnets, in line two. And we get used to them.
And we think that’s who we are, as a kind of
volta, or working out of a theory.
As one who says “I will break this rock.”
Or “I will place this rock upon this rock.”
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John Gallaher is the author of, most recently, My Life in Brutalist Architecture (Four Way Books), and the forthcoming Radio Good Luck (Four Way Books). He was born Eric Enquist in Portland, Oregon, and is co-editor of the Laurel Review. [“Garlands or Crowns of, Placed on Mouths of Wells” appears in Fence #42, spring 2025.
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Devil's Den, FyfieldHill, Marlborough, UK, late 19th century