catapult magazine

On the Shore of the Jordan River

by Joel Jacobson

We never know
the ways that children mourn.
Sometimes their play tells us —
with subtlety or clarity —
that a natural therapy
is stitching them back together.
Other times, they build
something simple
like a blue and red
Lego tower rising
beyond their short reach.
A Batman logo sticks to the top —
a beacon of strength and hope,
a light in Gotham’s darkest alleys.

There’s a second tower,
more of a farmhouse
in the shadow
of a skyscraper —
a little cross, a headstone
at the feet of a superhero.

“It’s daddy,” they say.
“And his little boy.”

*

She watches them play,
thinking that for this moment
her boys have set aside
their loss to work together,
to create and construct
in a world interested only
in upholding the laws
of physics.
They work and they build —
not to forget but to be,
not to forsake but to see,
not to resurrect the past
but to erect an altar
in the splash
of a broken river.