A Sound Box

By Michelle O’Sullivan
Down, unequal weight on his haunches
and the rain driving his shirt sideways,
his legs are as rigid as the stone and timber
that props him up. Ears, half-opened lips
slurred to bits; a head no longer able
to troubleshoot the broken glass inside him.


•


Wiry treetops are blacker. The after-rain light
diffused to near neon-gray. There was a boy
seen by neighbors running the width of the field.
One said he disappeared — as if he fell headlong
into the horizon. Another said it wasn’t a boy,
but a hart. Next to nothing left where Evans
was found, but there was a sound box,
some thing in which his soul made itself felt.
Copyright Credit: This poem is from The Flower and the Frozen Sea (forthcoming), by permission of the author and The Gallery Press, Loughcrew, Oldcastle, County Meath, Ireland.
Source: Poetry (September 2015)