Two poems

Revitalizing

what morning has not known the mountain it must cross

its snowcap and melt around a single spring flower

the blue slate sky fills with zeppelins of clouds

every day a new restoration

a new promise

generations never quite the same twice

this is nothing we can hold still

mornings come

regardless of season

politics

or weather’s meanness

mornings go

like the passage of laughter or sadness

the sky and land are sewn together

parting like lips

when light is an aura

closing when sighing with nightfall

a story settles down for the night

curls its magnificent differences

trying not to wonder

Attachment

Light tries to penetrate the cataracts of clouds.

Stars are rising, making bold statements.

Flowers turn achingly towards scarps of light.

Season keep grinding forward,

following their necessary urges.

I want to be motionless in this light.

I want it to enter me, purposely,

hurrying to emerge inside me.

I am tiling the fields

while my wife is tossing seed

into the open ground, like kisses.

Nothing else in life is assured.

Just this,

just this attempt to work together

to bring about change.

Into this light, into the decision

to become more than seed,

into the underground, into the love

we cannot ignore, we watch to see

what will happen next.

Martin Willitts, Jr. has 24 chapbooks including The Wire Fence Holding Back the World (Flowstone Press, 2017), the winner of the Turtle Island Quarterly Editor’s Choice Award. He also has 11 full-length collections including The Uncertain Lover (Dos Madres Press, 2018) and Coming Home Celebration (FutureCycle Press, 2019).