Harmony Peter Krumbach
It was a Sunday that felt as if the universe decided to
restring its harps. The blue-black crows brought their own shadows to walk
on, and realtors bared their well-meaning teeth. There was the movement of
bare shoulders and the gurgle of poured wine. Two short dogs, drunken on
birdsong, sniffed each other beneath the oak's low bow. There were no bad
intentions — goodness so thick, the Devil joined a game of bocce. The river
kept to its business of carving the dale, passing the poplars where, circled
by preschoolers in bright hats, sat an enormous tin tub. And right there,
among the shrieks of bliss, in his navy-blue suit, knelt the President,
bobbing for apples. A little girl pointed at the corpse submerged underneath
the floating fruit. The President held a Braeburn in his mouth and the front
of his do was drenched flat, the wet strands covering his eyes. Yes, a
beaming security agent whispered to the girl, bending closer to her ear,
someone has drowned. And let me tell you something else young lady — just
before people die, they brighten. And the moment he said that, there came
helicopters with their own remarkable wind and rotating heat, and against
the sky the propellers whipped in triangular smudges. And everything,
everything reflected in the river. And surely the fish were listening. The
pebbles and the mud were listening. The small porcupine, the grass, the
scree, the swallows swooping into midge clouds with open beaks, all
listening.
Peter Krumbach has work in or coming from The Greensboro Review, Michigan
Quarterly Review, RHINO Poetry, New Ohio Review and others. He lives in California.
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