Scott Weaver
Detour Ghazal
Somewhere, maybe a place like Santa Fe, New Mexico, or Durango, Colorado,
or in a simple brown bungalow in a row of the same on the south side of Boise, Idaho,
sits another version of yourself, as real as you sit now, wishing to trade their life for yours.
Maybe it’s a Tuesday and the client they needed to keep the firm afloat passed,
or there’s a war in a desert or a city perpetually mispronounced and they don’t want to go,
or they’ve just made their final mortgage payment and wander through their rooms
humming with a new, quiet panic. This second you sighs over yogurt
or taps two fingers on the steering wheel in traffic, tired of the taste of coffee and toothpaste.
Or they stop midstep at dawn, looking out from the trailhead into the desert,
trying to see it plainly against this new light, to discard the abundance of days
that have become a sudden burden. Your life looks pretty good to them.
Never mind the car this morning, how you duct taped its grill back on its rusted face,
forcing it to smile its gap-toothed grin again. It was 46 degrees and you drove
the long way to work, windows down, while the trees dared you to imagine life beyond them
and you dared them right back. Someone might be happy in this life. Someone
who’s stopped to rest too long. All they’d have to do is sell the house, make the numbers work,
cross back over the river before it swells into something impossible.
Maybe they can. Scott, they think, we’ve done it before.
Scott Weaver’s poems have appeared in Rattle, The New York Quarterly, DIAGRAM, UCity Review, and other journals. Home & Ghost is his debut poetry collection. Scott earned his MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University, where he was a Heritage Fellow. He lives with his wife, Kelli Jo Ford, and their daughter Cypress in Richmond, Virginia, and teaches English at Reynolds Community College. Find him here: http://www.scott-weaver.com
Return to May 2021 Edition
Somewhere, maybe a place like Santa Fe, New Mexico, or Durango, Colorado,
or in a simple brown bungalow in a row of the same on the south side of Boise, Idaho,
sits another version of yourself, as real as you sit now, wishing to trade their life for yours.
Maybe it’s a Tuesday and the client they needed to keep the firm afloat passed,
or there’s a war in a desert or a city perpetually mispronounced and they don’t want to go,
or they’ve just made their final mortgage payment and wander through their rooms
humming with a new, quiet panic. This second you sighs over yogurt
or taps two fingers on the steering wheel in traffic, tired of the taste of coffee and toothpaste.
Or they stop midstep at dawn, looking out from the trailhead into the desert,
trying to see it plainly against this new light, to discard the abundance of days
that have become a sudden burden. Your life looks pretty good to them.
Never mind the car this morning, how you duct taped its grill back on its rusted face,
forcing it to smile its gap-toothed grin again. It was 46 degrees and you drove
the long way to work, windows down, while the trees dared you to imagine life beyond them
and you dared them right back. Someone might be happy in this life. Someone
who’s stopped to rest too long. All they’d have to do is sell the house, make the numbers work,
cross back over the river before it swells into something impossible.
Maybe they can. Scott, they think, we’ve done it before.
Scott Weaver’s poems have appeared in Rattle, The New York Quarterly, DIAGRAM, UCity Review, and other journals. Home & Ghost is his debut poetry collection. Scott earned his MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University, where he was a Heritage Fellow. He lives with his wife, Kelli Jo Ford, and their daughter Cypress in Richmond, Virginia, and teaches English at Reynolds Community College. Find him here: http://www.scott-weaver.com
Return to May 2021 Edition