by W.F. Lantry
If you could truly be the day:
any day: one when the wind lifts branches
in rippled waves across the anchored hills
as the sun becomes what it once was
and even the deer take wing,
or a day when everything has calmed
and the silence is like glass
still glowing orange from the forge
small bits of rime forming around the walls
each edge waiting to shatter,
then you could know how the air feels now
with the storm waiting offshore
circling, circling and watching
like an osprey scanning the breakers
ready to plunge and dive,
or you could be the night, and your darkness
filled with untamable wind,
you could be those sounds everyone hears
but no-one sees as they turn
the brick corners of their homes,
you could even be the eye
with chaos swirling around you
but centered, like the pin of the wheel
turning only around yourself
while the waves and branches break.
W.F. Lantry received his Licence and Maîtrise from the Université de Nice, M.A. in English from Boston University and Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston. The recipient of the Paris/Atlantic Young Writers Award, and the CutBank Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry, his work has appeared in The Wallace Stevens Journal, Ellipsis, Poets for Living Waters, Kritya Journal of Poetry, Interrobang!? Magazine and Prairie Fire. He currently works in Washington, DC.
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