WHAT YOU HEARD

As I drank your mornings starless: A hue the color of breath.

Something like drifting vapor against this curtain

Of birdsongs. Maybe it was the closeness of the horizon

And what I said under it that closed our eyes.

And then it felt quiet at which point there was nowhere to be.

Cloud-like ribbons of shadow blanketed past. Simultaneously

New and ancient like stillness and wind. Understand the muteness

Of rain-washed fingertips at which point I fell in love

With this arterial land. A tree doesn’t know how to survive

Without its grief-sounds spilled into air.


Tyler Michael Jacobs currently resides in central Nebraska where he spends his time bicycling and searching for the perfect beer. He is a graduate of the University of Nebraska at Kearney. He has words in, or forthcoming: ​The Wax Paper, Funicular Magazine, White Wall Review, Polaris, and The Good Life Review among numerous other journals and magazines.

Twitter: @iamtylerjacobs