Cold Water Trombone
By Mark Hennessy

When we were together,
He was in the ice-broken Potomac,
and the rescue,
and the ladder,
and he passes it again to someone else.

I’m going to play trombone
in the fourth-floor hall
outside your apartment door,
backlit by the parts of the plane
not frozen that are burning.
He passes the ladder
again to someone else.

I have on your father’s
brown pin-striped suit,
dancing bandy-legged,
treading sub-zero water,
outside your apartment door.
The trombone slides warm brass
down, down
and this time the ladder goes
untouched above the still water.

— Mark Hennessy will read at 8 p.m. Friday during the first installment of the Lawrence Poetry Series at the Lawrence Arts Center, 940 N.H. He will be joined by Ed Tato and Jason Ryberg. Hennessy, formerly of Lawrence, now lives in North Carolina.