September 11, 2017 | Occasus | Issue 7 | Poetry
A Posteriori Knowledge
“There can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience.”
Immanuel Kant God:
I remember the April rain the morning of my mother’s funeral; appropriate. You drove our sedan with the weight of my forehead against the passenger window. The first magnolia trees had blossomed, soft winds were dissolving the dark clouds, and from the south, geese flew honking together. My Child:
Born curly-haired and crying he always clutched fingers with ape instincts and couldn’t use words to explain troubled thoughts. You and I, my wife, are Dutch skinned, and both misunderstood the reasons I slept long like a newborn and chose not to hold our baby. At toddlers’ playdates you laughed: dark black curls, like your Greek great-aunt’s. Loss:
You were eating fresh cherries naked in our linen sheets, fingering his dark curls before you stiffened with unlocked eyes. (I always worked Sunday mornings; gave me an excuse to miss church.) After I smashed the sedan into a pine tree-- which never loses its leaves, despite the seasons—you told the mourners, “it must have been the grief." |
NATHAN LITTLE is doing a double major in Philosophy, and Social Justice and Peace Studies.