How to Stop the Old Conversation - Jackie Huss Hallerberg

[Larry Robinson]

How to Stop the Old Conversation

Go out on a winter’s day
and take the winding boardwalk that snugs up against
white sands and the slender grasses of Asilomar beach.

See the power of the Pacific surf, waves breaking, 
then building, almost too close to shore today,
so even the wooden planks solidly placed seem to sway as you walk.

Smell your growing weariness — 
a sudden rainfall and you’ve left the umbrella in the car,
a slight glance at the man and his dog passing and your toe catches a rock,
a request to snap a picture and your memory goes back fifteen years,
      then twenty, then thirty, until you land on what seemed like solid ground,

only to find all the promises broken now.

Set the timer for thirty minutes to walk out, then return, in consideration
for the long drive home and the coming storm and your mind, 
which sometimes forgets where the car is parked and where you started.

Return to the lodge, search for dry socks and the water bottle,
queue the book-on-tape, watch bridesmaids in orange hurry in from the rain, 
then wonder why a young couple rushing past has missed the wedding.

Invite your own particular aloneness to sit in the seat beside you,
its breath alive with heartbreak and fury and sweet regret, 
and as you drive away let the soft words of a new conversation 
slide in through the open window — 

just listen.

- Jackie Huss Hallerberg


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