How can I tell you
To bow
Before taking your guitar
Along the old road
How can I say
That now
Is the time to listen
To the wind like a fluttering
In the throat
Or to witness
The occultation of smoke
Drifting from your neighbor’s
Chimney into the dark
Blood of dusk when
Everywhere the long arms
Of clouds
Stir the horizon
Like waves
Like giant wings
Reminding us
We are also the snow
That falls like song
Over everything
We Were Like That Then
Your life is one long night—Oedipus Rex
Night stretches and I am a haunting
Of birds, feathering thick with dusk,
A flood of beaks shadowing the unclad
Oaks, a sudden patter of feet like rain,
Swallowing all the names inside me.
I make walls from husk of breath and blurred
Sky and wait for the water to rise—
Hold me. Now the darkness will break.
Peter Grandbois is a widely published writer. His plays have been performed nationwide. He is poetry editor at Boulevard and teaches at Denison University in Ohio. website