Poet Jay Hopler is Associate Professor of English at the University of South Florida in Tampa. He has degrees from Purdue, Johns Hopkins, NYU and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He’s been published in American Poetry Review, The New Republic, the New Yorker and SLATE. And he’s written three books of poems. Today’s is titled “Memorial Day” in honor of his father.
When we aired the Versed in Florida series years ago Hopler was a part of it. WGCU’s Amy Tardif welcomes him back to the program.
MEMORIAL DAY
Behind the banyan trees, the mansions. Behind the mansions, the lagoon—.
In the lagoon, a mooring of sailboats.
Wind in the rigging.
Hull-slap and groan.
Where is everybody?
The sound of people playing in their pools—well…, there
Isn’t any; the streets
Are empty—, the moon, like a moon
Jelly, beating its slow float in the not-
Quite-dark. In the gardens of the Moorings Country Club,
The lights have come on, rice paper lanterns on which are
Printed cherry blossoms. O—this un-
Starred sky. And the smell of the star
Jasmine, the fleshy, resplendent scent
Of the gardenia. Is this where I say, I
Miss you? Where I say, father, isn’t there anything
In this evening’s long cortege of bloom as beautiful
As it used to be?
Like the sound of a ghost ship drifting
Through fog—like a sweet-despicable
Imitation of mourning—a piteousness of doves is cooing
In the banyan trees.