Eryn Green
Sounds (second walk)
Slow example falling from cedars—
snow caught in streetlight, like it was breathing—
sudden chill in the line
in Sounds this morning—
To be the mast of
such great admiral
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
and moved
out into the street
I watch the clumsy
grace of bicyclists in January
unblushing the sky, shamed of nothing
suddenly my life
makes sense: I get along
until the cloud just collapses—
I am standing on the freeway
and cars move by like drunk panthers
I am loved again
like there was future again –
in street clothes
take small notes
on unfolding
chorus. I can’t just
go out and buy a wheat-colored soul—an overgrown
path in the weeds behind the school
rough elm edges
affection rattled like a furnace
behind French doors—
Red
orange-red
yellow-red green—
I had wanted to be
a courtyard full of street lights
No cars, just the sidewalk when it rains—
makeshift forests
where there weren’t any
yesterday—the kind of line
that lets you out into the world, the glimpses
you get when the wall shifts
to windows enough
for lights, Christmas
to stream by. I want to be
the picture of myself going out—
the sidewalk when it rains. These sayings
calm me down. Rooftop tennis courts. Also
Ice-crystals, halo
reddish inner edge—
sun-stormy aurora—aurora at speeds
Eryn Green is a doctoral candidate at the University of Denver. A nominee for a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, awarded by the Poetry Foundation, his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Word for/ Word, Painted Bride Quarterly, Eclipse, the tiny, Bat City Review, H_NGM_N, Rhino, Iron Horse Review, Pheobe, Esquire and Denver Quarterly.