Poem of the Week: David Keplinger

  

Photo by Jake Adam York             

Wave

Lincoln, leaving Springfield, 1861,

Boards a train with a salute: but it is weak.

To correct it, he slides his hand away

From his face as if waving, as if brushing

The snows of childhood from his eyes.

The train is coming East. In the window

Lincoln watches his face. You'll grow old

The moment you arrive, he says to this face.

But you will never reach great age. The train

Speeds like the cortical pressure wave

In the left lateral sinus, say, a bullet

In the skull. Then he will have his salute.

Then they will love him. Then eternity will slow, fall

Like snow. Then the treaty with huge silence

Which he, his face exhausted, must sign.

-David Keplinger

  

Used by permission.

From Academy of American Poets "Poem-a-Day"  

David Keplinger is the author of four poetry collections, most recently The Most Natural Thing (New Issues, 2013). He teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at American University and is at work on a book about his great-great grandfather, a Civil War veteran falsely accused of desertion and incarcerated in Washington for nearly a year during the war.   

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