Darkly
by Jake Adam York
The moss never falls.
However gray,
it hangs like shirts
left to weather and rag
over the road
and the dead-end rail
and in all the branches
from there to the shore
and then as far upriver
as you can see.
Here it’s only open water,
empty sky,
two ends of road no one uses,
landfill on one side, thicket
on the other,
the story of a bridge between.
Below, the water’s huddled,
cold and silver.
It won’t show a thing.
So I look for that place in the air
where they held a gun
on Willie Edwards
and told him he could jump.
Narrative in third person voice
non-rhyming, uneven couplets
three short sentences, two longer ones
extremely economic syntax
shows desolation through landscape descriptions
four lines begin with “and,” five with the vowel ‘a’
“moss” and “hangs” allude to lynching
eleven lines of enjambment
“story of a bridge” alludes to dead man’s untold story
“huddled” indirectly refers to crowd of onlookers
“place in the air” refers to where Willie’s body hung
opposition of “two” and “one” in same line
alliteration of ‘h’ in “However” and “hangs,” “road” and “rail,” “only open,” “one…other,” and “bridge between.”
strong verbs in: “falls,” “hangs,” “weather and rag”
simpler verbs in “left,” “see,” “uses,” “show,” “look,” “held,” and “told.”
Title carries multiple implications: black skin, dark side of humanity, obscure truth, etc.
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