It isn’t just the uncertainty of things,
the hairline crack in the hawthorn
trunk, the grackle banging into the window
then disappearing. It is the prayer
we think of as the evening moon: grub white
and listing in the sky, unmoored.
Or the loam we imagine as our bodies:
we were formed from a clay
that we’ve forgotten. Now the crickets
are calling in the field,
beseeching us or chanting, offering
the persistence of their voices
to the stars, which will not listen. Or perhaps
the earth is a mother rocking the infant
of the moon, and this rhythm
is the rhythm of uncertainty.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 14, Issue 1.
Doug Ramspeck is the author of four poetry collections, the most recent of which, Mechanical Fireflies (2011), won the Barrow Street Press Book Prize. His first book, Black Tupelo Country (2009), was awarded the John Ciardi Prize. His poems have appeared in The Kenyon Review, Slate, Alaska Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. In 2009 he received an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award. He directs the Writing Center and teaches creative writing at The Ohio State University at Lima.
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