Whisper Study I

By Janelle Lynch

July 2024

Whisper Study I, lyric poem published with lumen prints.

The Ekphrastic Review, Toronto, Canada,

I drop to my knees next to Nana on command. Fold my hands. Close my eyes. Bow my brown head, small among strangers. We pray for something I can’t understand, for something I should believe in, but don’t. We follow orders from a man in a white dress this week, black next, to sit, stand, sing, sign. We nod to each other, smile. Some shake hands, share wishes by rote for peace we don’t know. Nana, raising me, her daughter's child, in late middle age, may never know. Next to me is my god, not the figure on the cross above the altar, not the man in pictures. Next to me is my saviour. 

I drop to my knees with the news I saw walking up the pier that stood in the Hudson River. News imparted in his bowed head I last touched across the table five months before. News spread across the front page of his rounded shoulders speckled under his shirt with constellations of beauty marks he mistook for freckles until I taught him otherwise. (I taught him.) News broadcast in his awkward gait, both hurried and hesitant to reach me. 

I drop to my knees on the bare beach in front of the Atlantic. Sand softens my landing. The drama of my gesture is mirrored in that of late autumn’s waters, in the sky’s Payne’s Grey palette, in the dunes' shapes, wind-sculpted. No one is around to bear witness save for the sea’s gulls, shells, weed, so I stand up to fall again, to be caught. To be cradled.