10 VARIATIONS ON ECHOLOCATION OR PRAYER FOR A FORMER STUDENT WHO CLINGS TO LIFE IN AN UNKNOWN HOSPITAL.

The word of your name returns as echo. It is my voice but watery, heavy with final syllable. The sound skips across the rain-dark plane of the afternoon.

An echo can originate anywhere: valley, wall, person, recollection, theory, guesswork. One must traverse-try; one must envision the striking-surface. Will I grow expert in the forlorn art?

The object receives the skill of the inquiry. The cleaner the return, the closer the object. But proximity may be a map, the coordinates where echo may originate, in minutes and seconds.  

Proximity might be painful but echo requires neighborhood. If I am to find you, I must suffer through the possibility of shape bent-against blurry color. (Imprecise, me.)

What is echolalia? Echo et alia? As if there were echo + echoes, which confounds the mission to discover. The inquiry at a remove; the jangle of clashing voices + directions.

If the echo never varies. The same stolid note, a clatter in place of language. An echo becomes a bird. An echo becomes a bird climbing through the echo of mistranslation.

A realtor might say: “Echolocation! Echolocation! Echolocation!” I imagine you finding this witty, whatever your state. Laughter, I realize, might disarray the apparatus that sustains you.

Lightning hacks through air toward a tree. The very same splintering noise, a limb separating from the tree. These two at once, lightning and the heavy wood tearing from its trunk. 

What I mean is, I am trying to locate you.

Many years ago, I concluded a poem by writing [that I] try to catch echoes with my hands. At last, I know what these words mean. I will persevere.