Poem of the Week, by Nathaniel Perry
- Nathaniel Perry
Do you remember when the sky burned down
its wick of light as an April cold came on
the evening of your fifth day in the world?
Of course you don’t, you couldn’t even hold
your head up yet, much less begin to think
to hold one evening’s ash inside, like a drink
held up to the sun, trapping and clutching the light.
But I wonder sometimes if within the slighter
corners of your mind you’ve held a hint of it,
the light I saw beyond the trees which split
the view from our rented front porch, while you
slept, swaddled as if in song, through
the louder sleep of your mother beside you. Rache,
if you can find that evening, which is stationed
in my chest, inside you now, I swear it will
get you somewhere, across a field so filled
with snow the sky and ground are one, across
a field so bleached with drought the giant cross
of shadows from the pines is friction enough
to set the day on fire. You’ll come, rough
in your heart, to the edges of those fields and be lifted
just a fraction of an inch by the gift
of the sky’s old light in you. It will remind
you to invite yourself, the whole of your mind,
the whole history of your self along across
the grass. If you see yourself you can’t be lost;
though I may lose sight of you against the sky,
or in the vetch, in bloom, where the meadow rises.
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For more information on Nathaniel Perry, please click here: http://www.kenyonreview.org/conversation/nathaniel-perry/
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My blog: alisonmcghee.com/blog
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