Lyric

My words are breath. The paper starts a fire.
Each willow rattles a bitter breeze.
Where is blue ice of the glacier? What ache is this?

The deep sands came in wind. Turn the file
against that edge. The bottom of the lake is black.
Ice storm legs, my shaking direction.

Small flags, markers in the earth. Under the silt
is sand. The woodstove is a tender heart.
Fingers in bright coals. Horizons of smoke.

The yellow finch’s bobbing flight.
A thistle whispers meager seeds. Kerosene leaking.
Harmonicas whittling songs of old men.

Tools that fit no hands. Busted log, oh my
winter heart. Long frozen up north,
the water of tamaracks. This lasts how long?

With work, the steel takes on a sheen.
The bank of earth cries “sh-sh-sh-s-s-s-s-s-sh-sh….”
Almost as silent as a well, the pulse in the wrist.

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Steve Fay‘s poetry has recently appeared (or is forthcoming) in The Decadent Review, Leon Literary Review, Menacing Hedge, Spoon River Poetry Review, Tar River Poetry, and TriQuarterly. His collection, what nature: Poems, was published by Northwestern University Press in 1998. He lives in Fulton County, Illinois.