THE CONFLUENCE OF SCOPE AND SCALE IN A MICHIGAN FOREST
The bulldozers. The fog. The maples.
The multitudes in the silvery fall.
From here every galaxy looks like faith,
every downed tree like a tomb
remade in the morning steam.
To witness is to condemn,
to observe is to invent patterns in flesh,
green that muscles into collapse.
Even the farthest point is not the farthest point.
There is no limit to the weight we can bear
or the distance we can admit—
what we see as darkness
is light that has not arrived. There is a size
at which anything smaller
stops making sense. A loneliness
no longer visible to the naked eye.
To the apple tree, sudden frost is infinity
but the frost molecule needs no universe
beyond the nearest sun. Where we are is who we are.
Imagine this as birthplace. As love affair.
Perspective means only everything
and time is closer than it appears.
Soon the roar. Soon the fire. Soon
the disappearance of all we cannot hold.
NOCTURNE WITH SHOVEL & STORM
I imagine burying a jar of pennies until they turn green. In the middle of the coins an unwritten letter, sealed in an envelope, turning to dust.
The night spits back my shortcomings: my lack of follow-through, all I leave unspoken.
The stars flash like bone & vanish into the clouds. I feel most at home when lost like this.
The trees crack in the wind. The rain begins slowly, gains strength, sluices & plumes. Dirt to mud. The washing away. The unburying of certain promises.
This woman I love, I imagine her waiting for the lightning to see me clearly: I am silhouette, shadow, splintered limb.
Amorak Huey is author of the chapbook The Insomniac Circus (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2014) and the forthcoming poetry collection Ha Ha Ha Thump (Sundress Publications, 2015). A former newspaper editor and reporter, he teaches writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. His poems appear in The Best American Poetry 2012, The Cincinnati Review, The Southern Review, The Collagist, Menacing Hedge, and many other print and online journals. More here.