David Jauss

Moonlight In Vermont

in memory of Jim Ferry

My eyes open to dark. The sound I’ve been dreaming
continues, a knife-blade honed on a whetstone. Whose hand

was holding the knife, and for what purpose?
My heart beats hard, as if it wants to break down

the door between death and life. Gradually
the room reassembles itself, gathering the molecules

of desk, dresser, and bookcase the darkness diffused,
and the whetstone becomes a snowplow

clearing the campus streets. I’m in Montpelier,
here for two weeks to teach aspiring writers

how little I know, or anyone knows,
about this art that requires so much devotion

to doubt. I get up and raise the shade. There,
snowing its white light down

on the Green Mountains, glinting on the golden dome
of the state capitol, is the moon Ella sang about,

so hypnotized by the lovely. My wife’s
favorite singer, and song. A thousand miles away,

she’s sleeping on her side of the bed, dreaming,
I hope, of me. I’ll be home in two days

but that seems light years away
now that one of us has been found dead

on his dorm room floor beside
the book he was reading, Reed’s Beach,

Bret Lott’s novel about death’s gift
for surprising us in an instant

into a lifetime of grief, that nightmare
we’ll all wake to one day. I didn’t know him,

can’t even picture his face, but I feel his absence
in the moonlight illuminating the snowy square

he crossed three times a day to the dining hall.
How many times did I pass him on the sidewalk,

look at his and he at mine? In the morning,
we will meet—students, teachers, staff—

to mourn together. I’m not ready
to sit in that room full of strangers

I’ve grown so fond of and hear them testify
to death’s omnipotence, each word

one more stroke of the knife against the stone. I want
to be home, next to my wife

in the moonlight, listening to the music
of her sleeping breath, that hypnotic,

healing sound, each lovely
inhalation and exhalation

of this dream we’re all living.

Friends of Zeiram
(Terry Wright)