Echo Location

Jerry Bradley

August 10, 2022

Rebounding from the other side of the canyon,

my words come back, faint and out of step,

like stragglers returning from a lost campaign.

But it’s not just the words.  Memories come back too,

and there is no escaping their insistent repetition.

What I did once still resonates, and those deeds

intrude like the report of a small weapon

whose ricochet — imperative, resolute, and unrelenting —

is nevertheless as half-hearted as the landscape that surrounds

and the frown of a disappointed lover.

Jerry Bradley is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and is the author of 11 books. His poems have appeared in New England Review, Modern Poetry Studies, and Southern Humanities Review. He recently retired from Lamar University.