Light in Mexico
George Moore
in memoriam Tony Ostroff
The light you wrote of at war’s edge
that light fused to rose adobe
not of the jungles where so many bled
not of the barricades that stood against
whatever would disturb that light
whatever would yank us out of our desks
that glow of sunset dust on an old street
where two children ran and a tourist woman
tries to capture in her paints their fleeing
while the light was just right just rose
and it was not a place for death but light
and yet both were passing
We can almost return to it
but you are dead and the slender volume
now snug between a thousand friends
cries out on this northern shelf
occupies more than the lines say
a space in time that recuperates
the value of the time itself
as if cupped in these hands
But it is the silence that I remember
the sudden silence when gunfire ceases
the others their terror in the jungles
the dusty streets across which I ran
before the paint dries and we
are pressed between the pages
About the Author
George Moore’s collections include Children’s Drawings of the Universe (Salmon Poetry 2015) and Saint Agnes Outside the Walls (FutureCycle 2016). His poetry has been published in The Atlantic, Poetry, Valparaiso, Stand, Orbis, and the Colorado Review. He lives with his wife, a Canadian poet, on the south shore of Nova Scotia.