Nathan Hauke
Deerfield (3)
Turning back to see a dead birch coupling against the
thin trunk of a cedar, the cedar straining.
Crossed by branches, I am constrained to acknowledge large sections of the birch’s paper
sag loosely around its trunk—a chrysalis, covered in orange stretches of light.
There is, there must be a higher origin of events than the will
I call mine.
Rotted branches and wraps of birch skin litter the wood’s floor, white-gray
with black flecks—a clear distinction from moss, orange-brown
dried needles, and brown and gray leaves that have drifted in from
neighboring maples.
“Of New Noise and Affection”
This-that morning stammer—
Jet black, navy and white magpies take flight, thread magnolia
branches, pushing the courtyard’s shadowy skin forward—
building momentum which—even the light, stammering to hold
“magnolia.” Each impression writes in mind a fleeting memorial. True because I
believe it—that the same yellow-green light colors the trees—the same material of
atoms—Noah passes on his way to school. My chest, a bottle
emptying into the current. Magpies opening holes in the heat—steam
rising audible, in drifts, semi-transparencies; falling—up—over there,
the singular feather—We are rushing to meet—failing—
foundling
Nathan Hauke lives in Salt Lake City where he is enrolled in the MFA program at the University of Utah. He also has an MA from Central Michigan University. His poems have appeared in—or are forthcoming from—Colorado Review, New American Writing, XANTIPPE,Twenty Six, Electronic Poetry Review, Word for / Word, Can We Have Our Ball Back,and The Tiny. Donald Revell selected his poem “Fear of Falling” as a finalist for Electronic Poetry Review’s Discovery Award (2005).