Podcast (claritycast): Play in new window | Download | Embed
What about the dew-
sodden morning, eyes open
to the already turning
earth? Or batter blinking
in the pan? Because today
we have nowhere to be.
These movements are true.
They’re made by hands
toward a deer in the whistle
grass. It is somewhere
within arms reach
and there’s no way to know
in which direction.
But reach. Reach still.
When the hills
are finally blanketed
and our desires
for something brighter
become quiet, we can take
that light, work it
into the newly whitened
world, send it around
and back to mark our way.
We are full-hearted
and merciless, ready
to smother the shouting day
and invent a song for all
this incessant longing.
Jess Williard‘s poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Third Coast, North American Review, Colorado Review, Southern Humanities Review, Barrow Street, december, Sycamore Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, The New Orleans Review, Oxford Poetry, and other journals. He is from Wisconsin.