At the 50th by Krikor Der Hohannesian

Harvard College Reunion, Class of 1958

Adrift between symposia and seminars,

a drizzle of  reverie on Bow Street,

aimless nostalgia graying in droplets of fog.

At the corner of Arrow the campanile

of St. Paul’s looming through the mist,

Italianate monolith, blood-red brick.

this was where you fell, Marco,

a bluster of a June day, 1957, the day

the scaffolding betrayed you, left

you hanging to mock gravity, the split

second of wonder before the inevitable.

I stare up, watch the swallows and wrens

loop and hover about the belfry clock,

the minute hand inches toward the hour,

the bells toll three, the birds

whoosh off at the plangent peal.

that was when you fell, after sweaty

hours sandblasting brick,

flailing the humid air, wingless

against the corkscrew dive.

I stare down at the concrete

where your blood once pooled –

so where were the winged angels

to waft you safely to ground?

they said your head hit first,

that the sound was one nobody

would want to hear again.

And tonight we will be dining and

dancing – a cloudburst of reminiscence

for us who have survived the thunder

of a half century, the one lost to you

in a heart’s single beat,

a rogue gust of hot wind.

Krikor Der Hohannesian lives in Medford, MA. His poems have appeared in over 150  literary journals including The Evansville Review, The South Carolina Review, Atlanta Review, Louisiana Literature, Connecticut Review and Natural Bridge. He is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of two chapbooks,“Ghosts and Whispers” (Finishing Line Press, 2010) and “Refuge in the Shadows” (Cervena Barva Press, 2013). “Ghosts and Whispers” was a finalist for the Mass Book awards poetry category in 2011.