John Romagna

A Place to Fish
(For Tim Romagna: 1990 - 2012)

I placed my hand on your chest,
Looked at the straight green line on the monitor;
Your breathing was done. There is no silence
Like that. You were there,
But you were not.

Nurses came back.
They had quiet work.

So do I,
Keeping your workroom:
Your tools; machines set up as though
You just used them,
Unfinished guitars,

You could be cutting your initials into a fretboard,
Swearing,
Starting over.

I drive the roads you drove, in the country
Where joggers can run on the wrong side,
Places that are not silent of themselves
But you’re not there, singing Sinatra,
Not stopping when a fox runs in front of you,
Not pulling over in the shade of the same trees
I see now, or leaning on a 3-rail fence, taking photos
Of goldenrod and long grass as they sway in circles
As though there is more than one wind. Not arriving
At the bridge, where the river flows beneath you
Like antique glass. You told me, spiders there
String webs like spiral galaxies, so many,
They must be their own universe

John Romagna lives in Clinton, NJ. His most recently published poem, Variation on a Poem by Yeats, was awarded Honorable Mention in the Passager Journal’s 2022 Anual Poetry Contest issue, September 2022.