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      April 27, 2024The One and the OtherHayden Saunier

      The child hums as he carries, too late,
      his grandmother’s sugar-dusted lemon-glazed cake
       
      down the street to the neighbor who needs to be cheered,
      too late for the neighbor
       
      who’s stepped into the air
      of her silent front hall from a ladder-backed chair
       
      her church dress just pressed, her head in a loop she tied
      into the clothesline, too late
       
      he unlatches the gate,
      walks up the brick walk on his tiptoes, avoiding the cracks
       
      toward the door she unlocked, left ajar, who knows why
      or for whom, if on purpose
       
      or not, but because he’s too late
      she’s gone still when he reaches the door and because
       
      he’s too late, as he calls out and looks, brilliant sun
      burns through haze
       
      pours through sidelights and bevels
      through chandelier prisms, strikes white sparks and purples
       
      on ceiling and walls, on the overturned chair, on her stockings
      her brown and white
       
      spectator shoes on the floor
      and because he’s too late he remembers both terror and beauty
       
      but not which came first. But enough of the one
      that he ran
       
      and enough of the other
      to carefully lay down the cake at her feet.

      from #36 - Winter 2011

      Hayden Saunier

      “I love the way objects and people and ideas find their way together in a poem. An old friend sent me an outrageous pound cake at Christmas and when I described it as sugar-dusted, lemon-glazed, the story of the boy in this poem, told to me years ago, came straight to my mind and stayed there. It was all in the cake: that sunny yellow circle with its center missing, dense, empty, bitter, sweet, the gestures we make too late, the child’s ability to take in everything at the same moment, at once and complete: It was all in the cake.”

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