The day is short, the night hungry,
the month dwindles and I am glad.
If there's any lesson to be learned from
a catalpa tree, it's persistence. It's reach
over taste, sprawl over shadow. Size
is relative but not irrelevant.
Expectations form at the root,
but there is no direction that cannot change.
What binds to earth?
What cleaves from sky?
There is an upper limit to truth.
Everything that lives, dies. Everything
that dies – but I have nothing left to say.
Every lightning strike leaves a scar.
©
teaches writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. His poetry has appeared in The Best American Poetry 2012, Cincinnati Review, Subtropics, PANK, and other print and online journals. Follow him on Twitter: @amorak.
