Richard Foerster
Disbelief can sweep like surf
across the sill, or what the oaks
mimic: shuttled limbs, wind-woven
susurrations, which the house
breathes in, fabricating a dream
through which lovers can raft
on the ambient dark, and their minds,
relenting, settle, passive yet attentive
to the sensuous slosh of sea and air—
that’s how our bodies hovered, between
substance and seeming nothing, between
a deep that would dissolve our every cell
and a vast emptiness I sometimes think of
as God, from which I awoke, that last time
we slept together, with him yoked in my arms.
Richard Foerster is the author of five collections of poems and the former editor of Chelsea and Chautauqua Literary Journal. His honors include NEA and Maine Arts Commission fellowships, the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship, and the “Discovery”/The Nation Award, among others. His poems have appeared widely in magazines and anthologies since 1975, including The Best American Poetry, Poetry, TriQuarterly, The Southern Review, and Kenyon Review, along with many more.