You fold your arms the way this pasture
gnaws on the wooden fence
left standing in water –make a raft
though it’s these rotting staves
side by side that set the Earth on fire
with smoke rising from the ponds
as emptiness and ice –you dead
are winter now, need more wood
to breathe and from a single finger
point, warmed with ashes and lips
no longer brittle –under you
a gate is opened for the cold
and though there’s no sea you drink
from your hands where all tears blacken
–you can see yourself in the flames.
___
Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review,
The Nation, Osiris, Poetry, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. His most recent collection is Almost Rain, published by River Otter Press (2013). For more information, free e-books and his essay titled “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.
