A Conversation

by Zeke Shomler

Though we are not at war, today there are warplanes
crossing the valley, low to the ground. My father asks me
where I plan to live these next few years, if I’ll stay up North
to wait out the regime. Though we are not at war,

there is war. He sends me a link to a video of armed troops
crossing a park in Los Angeles, their black helmets bobbing
round as grenades. The tension down here, he says,
it’s thick in the air. You can feel it. Next week he’s driving

to Mexico, maybe forever. We’ll see. He tells me of his plans
to live in the mountains, to plant lemon trees and taste
agave, to drive down to the beach and write terse prose about the color
of the waves. Though he is not a painter, he might paint. The world 

is full of possibilities and a small number of them
are not terrifying. I ask him if there’s anything he’ll miss 
about America, anything he wants to see
before he goes. There is so much to do, he says, and I don’t know

if I can take any more. There is beauty, yes,
there certainly is beauty, but there is only so much
a man can hold at once. I tell him I am grasping reality
like two birds squirming in my hands. Let them go, he says,

while you still can. He told me once about his regrets: dropping out of college,
five kids, the first two wives. I hear them now, in the straining of his voice.
When he hangs up the phone, I finally
let myself cry.

***

Zeke Shomler earned a Combined MA/MFA from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He now also teaches secondary math. His work has appeared in AGNI, Modern Language Studies, The Shore, and elsewhere.