The Sun in Bemidji, Minnesota
The sun isn’t even a pearl today—
its light diffused, strained gray
by winter haze—this the grayest
day so far, so when I enter the Wells
Fargo parking lot the last thing I expect
is to see the sun in the car next to mine.
I watch a woman make out with the sun,
and I’m jealous of the sun. Beautiful
beyond her desire—wanting the sun
so—she almost glows as she tugs
sweetness from his whiskers with
her teeth, and his drool runs down
her chin. I think the sun is a man,
but it’s hard to tell in this light. No,
it’s a mango, and I’m jealous of her.
Copyright © 2015 by Sean Hill. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 17, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.
“For me there are sometimes these moments in life in which I feel like I’ve walked into a poem. I come to recognize a dramatic situation—a situation in which the doing or acting feels from my perspective not ordinary. And I feel a resonance with what I’m experiencing, and language comes to me to try and help me make something of it. Poetry requires attentiveness. A kind of inadvertent voyeurism or fascination—a type of attentiveness—and the happenstance that engenders some poems are a part of this. And I remember my first mango, which I had years before my first kiss, which I remember too. And it goes without saying that Bemidji, Minnesota, is a very special place.”
—Sean Hill
Sean Hill
