as if opening a crepe sail
on a raft of linden
downriver with no
glacial cut swerve down
soft like bourbon if I could
ask the waters then
to chop to shake
an apology when you cry
I feel a wet bank in me
ring dry here I'll wrap you
in the piano shawl from the upright
to your fists a spray
of dandelion and comb my last
compassion to grasp.
Goodbye, friend. Willows
dip to your lips
dew from their leafed
digits feast now
on the cold blue soup
of sky the iron from bankwater
gilts your blood I'll break
a bottle on your gunwale
and read broken
poems from the shore
as the dark river
curls back white from the cheap timber
as if letting what's made to drift
drift.



About this poem
"'I Could Let You Go' was an opportunity to imagine a ritual for saying goodbye. I wanted this poem to become something more, something sturdy, like a vessel that could hold and carry away something heavy."
-Thomas Dooley

About Thomas Dooley
Thomas Dooley is the author of "Trespass" (Harper Perennial, 2014). He is the artistic director of Emotive Fruition, a theater collective of actors and poets in New York. He lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

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The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day[at]poets.org.


(c) 2014 Thomas Dooley. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate