— for N.G.
No need for such manufactured unease
while the world, wound down, wearied,
breeds its own fears – dogs loosed howling
in the soulless dark, blue dreams, sounds
‘round a wind-worried lake crazing. I see
possibilities swallowed. I taste doubts,
tempered as a rusted train track
stretching along fallow fields miles out
to the horizon. Its line, a boundary, catches
within the throat. Consider, then, the flowers
summer sends (sunburst red, sugary
bubblegum pink) – distractions one gathers
even now against black and gelid nights;
they’re truer, always, than those wraiths
we’d sketch upon shadows everywhere.
Steve Wilson’s poetry has appeared in more than 200 journals and 65 anthologies. He is the author of six poetry collections, the most recent entitled Complicity (2023). He lives in San, Marcos, TX.
