John Huey
More Loss
Days of loss and a half moon above the tree,
So, the drivers here cross the median at the
oddest times, crashing themselves as only the
unknown can, with small regard for the
stretched canvas that is our skins.
Painted with this, but not indelibly we hope,
we are fixed in the current sorrow that passes
for history this past year when the birds fell
out the sky with bleak frequency, the air so
thick around here it pushed the wings down.
And I tell my kids, don’t give in to this pain,
With heads up and feet forward we will best
the bastards, but, bent down with these sorrows,
am I walking firm enough upon the land to
hold my place with them?
Older now, distracted by frailty despite the rage
inside this day, so deep in the disgust at the seen
that the moon, now gone full, casts no shade here,
and the walk in this darkness seems
stretched and expanded,
without limit.
John Huey is the author of The Moscow Poetry File (Finishing Line Press, 2017). His poems have appeared in Poetry Quarterly, Leannan Magazine, Sein und Werden, In Between Hangovers, Bourgeon, The Lost River Review, Red Wolf Journal, and Perfume River Poetry Review, as well as in the anthology Temptation (Lost Tower Publications, 2016).
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