That seagulls would grieve for you, circle down
as cries still wet, almost water, making the sky
look for a place not asking for more salt –mourn

the way a whitewashed wall is handed over
though a boy in sleeves is waiting nearby
with his initials around someone no longer there

–stone by stone it will come back and she
by the worn-down buttons on her blouse
that fell open to point a finger at the hole in the air.

Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Forge, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His most recent collection is The Gibson Poems published by Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library, 2019. For more information including free e-books and his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website. Watch a 1994 interview with Simon Perchik.