Poetry

hannah, my ophelia

James Bowden

As if it weren’t enough that he’d named the song something so sad,
Justin Vernon opens it acapella, voice grainy slow and gently strained, but
not pining. Most certainly not pining. But then, you

                                                                                                  were my love /
                                                                                                                         for all
                                                                                                                              of my best years

and are you crying now?, though before you can breathe there the guitar strings
pluck one-two quickly now gone and maybe you could call it upbeat? but
more just a turn. And kudos to him for it, where else can you go
from a line like that. Best just to divert my attention for a half-
second, off the song, though is it?, where
do you think my mind jumps before I can do anything about it,
now I’m in fucking Boston knocking on her door and hoping she’ll let me lay my big head
across her lap once more. But we both know that’s not happening and so bam
flash we’re wondering whether all of my best years have already passed,
unable to believe I’ll ever feel ecstatic, enveloped, like that again.

Rifles
crack

and we’re back. Something something lonesome but it’s nothing you haven’t heard already.
All a slow blur now. Something is happening, but I’m not quite sure what and it wouldn’t matter
anyway. And I can’t wrap my head around it. Something in his tone. Unflinching acceptance
maybe. He doesn’t pine and he does not yearn. Just swallows. Swallows and rolls around
what rocks he has in him to digest what has no give to chew on. And so we hear: pebbles
grating in the throat. The low baritone.

This is named after the Justin Vernon song of the same name. Ideally, you would first listen to the song to familiarize yourself, and then read through the poem in time with the song, if possible. Again, the ekphrastic.