A giant copper moon flares on the lake
in the early dark, and on the car radio, talk.
Talk trying to chew despair. Talk about fear
to hide fear. Talk about talk about talk.
Fifty cents, a dollar a word. It is all just talk
until it isn’t. A day may come soon when
we’ll have to pay with our lives for the lives
of our friends. What else did we ever have
to pay with? What else were we ever for?
Each ripple on the lake is a lick of flame.
Click here to read Richard Hoffman on the writing of this poem:
Image: “Moon rises over Palma de Mallorca” by TheWitscher, licensed under CC 2.0
Richard Hoffman is author of five books of poetry: Without Paradise; Gold Star Road, winner of New England Poetry Club's Sheila Motton Award; Emblem; Noon until Night, which received the Massachusetts Book Award, and People Once Real. Other books include the memoirs, Half the House and Love & Fury, Interference and Other Stories, and the essay collection Remembering the Alchemists.
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