Reveille by Liza Hudock (Poetry ’24)

REVEILLE

You died four months ago and the sparrows
still remember you. All I have to do

is show them the copper pot
you used to fill with water

to fling at their bush for their
manic chirping to cease.

Was the silence familiar
when it first closed over your ears?

When you exceeded your body
as a flood exceeds the river

you were everywhere.
When a flood recedes,

the ground looks unfamiliar.
Everything is out of place

and all the witnesses can say is
this is where the water was.

Once, you texted me
a line of poetry.

It wasn’t one of the big ones,
it was the kind of line I like.

The record of a life:
and I have sat and watched the trees.