Out of this fierce world
with its indifferent sky
how with such delicacy
can such mildness come?
And you in the center
of this whisper—out late
to greet it with your breath
one white word at a time.
A temporary treaty between
contending summer greens—
bushes you’ve clipped, grass
you’ve mown most of a year.
The shed, the fence, a stump.
The whole of it smoothed to
pure curves by this incremental
blanketing of everything,
less than a purr, stroking
it quiet, calming whatever
cries out from its dream,
turning it back to sleep.
No script.
No lines in the playbook
you can speak. Your part in this
is standing there.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 24, Issue 6.
Edward Wilson’s poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Georgia Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Poetry (Chicago), The Southern Poetry Review, The South Carolina Review, and others. His awards include an Individual Artist Fellowship from the state of Georgia, a Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Fellowship and an NEA Fellowship. His collection, In a Rich Country, published in April of 2019, won the Grayson Books Poetry Prize and was selected as the 2020 Georgia Author of the Year Awards as the finalist for Poetry. He lives in Augusta, Georgia.
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