Before locking up
and turning off lights,
he steps outside
with their black Lab,
the day’s cold soak
drizzling off, shivers of mist
dancing in his flashlight’s
low-slung beam.
Another day, he thinks,
another night. The dog noses in ivy,
the dark, soggy earth.
Inside, his wife sleeps,
her dreams winging out to him,
sorrow slicking
the beeches, the thin
white leaves that barely cling.
But the sky is opening,
and schooners of cirrus sail
the tree line, moon-washed,
their prows plowing rain-skirts
west to east.
Stars are bursting through,
one by one, now in clusters,
and the wind
is gathering, brisking
just enough
to part memory’s thicket,
clear a path back to spring.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 26, Issue 6.
Justin Hunt grew up in rural Kansas and lives in Charlotte, NC. His work has won several awards and appears in a wide range of publications in the U.S., Ireland and the U.K., including, among others, Barrow Street, Five Points, Michigan Quarterly Review, New Ohio Review, The Journal, Solstice, Arts & Letters, Cloudbank, The Florida Review, Bellingham Review, Terrain.org, Southword and The Bridport Prize Anthology. He is currently assembling a debut poetry collection.
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