Time I’m Not Here
All day on all my days,
the lives I’m not to process wash in;
anxieties lullaby on
and quite like to be gotten among;
but now—and now—one old,
abundant flower just screws up the room.
Copyright © 2016 by Graham Foust. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 4, 2016, by the Academy of American Poets.
“I’m not always so keen on notes to poems, but it might amuse the reader to know that I wrote this poem in the middle of the night after my coffee table collapsed, which terrified me, and which caused a vase of flowers that should’ve been thrown away days earlier—they were dry and smelled badly—to spill onto the floor.”
—Graham Foust
Graham Foust
Graham Foust is the author of several collections of poetry, including Time Down to Mind (Flood Editions, 2015); To Anacreon In Heaven (Flood Editions, 2013); A Mouth in California (Flood Editions, 2009); and Necessary Stranger (Flood Editions, 2007).