by Grant Clauser
for Brian Beatty
will think about his life
as he reaches the center,
or looks down at the water,
and considers the distance
between one abutment and the next
as a decision—the kind that rises
like a hawk from a guard rail
keeping watch on the horizon.
Snow Walk
When the house smells
like all day cooking
and I take the the dog out
for the night’s last visit
to the bare apple tree
in the backyard
under a moon so large
it feels like childhood,
the whole expanse of it,
I think it must be impossible
to write poems in a place
where it never snows
and while I know
that’s not a real worry,
that there are greater
inspirations than the moon’s
shadow in a line
of deer tracks
leading out of the pines,
I ask that you humor me
anyway, and love
how any flaw in the land
fills in with crystals,
weather doing
what history can’t,
erasing past and present,
correcting what other seasons
couldn’t get right.
Grant Clauser lives in Pennsylvania and works as an editor, writer, and teacher. He is the author of four books, mostly recently Reckless Constellations (winner of the Cider Press Review Book Award) and The Magician’s Handbook. Poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Cortland Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Tar River Poetry and others. Twitter: @uniambic