After Ron Rash
After my son heads for the hills
and my patience is at a loss,
all that remains in his workbook
is this, the broken-down chimney
of the dividend, divisor
sprawling with vines, a few weedy
footpaths of false-starts and dust-road
eraser marks, the line above
the quotient a dry-rotted beam
buckling but still holding things up,
where the answer is meant to be
empty sky, a film of pollen
that once sparkled and whirled in the sun.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 25, Issue 2.
Robert Fillman won the poetry contest at the 2016 Pennsylvania Writers Conference. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Blueline, The Comstock Review, Kestrel, Pembroke Magazine, Salamander, Spillway, and others. He lives in eastern Pennsylvania with his wife, Melissa, and their two children, Emma and Robbie.
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