From “Late Summer”
I’m on a bike and someone’s name is forming.
The road is potholes the road is dust.
Cruising the dirt, the meadow humming with bugs.
Dust rising, tires crushing rock, bats ejecting from under the barn
streaming the insected air the pulse life repeating life looping back
slowing down getting longer though it didn’t and isn’t.
A little letting go of fear.
A little spittle in death’s eye.
Don’t ask don’t think (I didn’t ask or think).
Didn’t think don’t think.
I remember giving in to it lying back and then
little sprout of willow
spray of the earth green of leaves the light coming down
as if through a ferny veil dirty primal randomly animate
and we are in it still.
From The Uses of the Body, published by Copper Canyon Press. Copyright © 2015 by Deborah Landau. Reprinted with permission of Copper Canyon Press.
Deborah Landau
Deborah Landau grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and earned a BA from Stanford University. She went on to receive an MA in English from Columbia University and a PhD in English and American literature from Brown University, where she was a Jacob K. Javits Fellow.