Carl Phillips - Then The War

They planted flowers because the house had many rooms
and because they’d imagined a life in which
cut flowers punctuate each room, as if each were a sentence

not just to be decorated but to be given some discipline,
what the most memorable sentences—like people—always
slightly resist ... Spit of land; rags

of cloud-rack. Meanwhile,
hawk’s-nest, winter-nest, stamina as a form of faith, little
cove that a life equals, what they meant, I think, by

what they called the soul, twilight taking hold
deep in th...