Brazos Bookstore / Academy of American Poets Prize, 2017

 

Sleeps somewhere in blackberry or salal, 

Cracked, leathery, emptied of secrets.

 

But its flights of burbling brightness once taught us to burst

From our skins––our spirits

 

Frivolous, skyward-leaping, 

Tracing butterfly-roads, and wavering inside 

 

The subtropical jet stream! 

As for you,

 

Now your pulse flutters 

Faintly in the wilds 

 

Of your extremities

As a silvery dust 

 

Dithers along 

These new suburban lanes,

 

Paltry half-rhyme 

Of the watery light you loved, the light you 

 

Conjured to suspend us and prevent us 

From waking and 

 

Descending too soon 

 

Into this other, more private world

Of suffering and contemplation.