The day growing colder under

A thin layer of winter sky

 

A little blue

With the crows

Bragging immensely in the trees

 

The evening spits up the moon

Like a wet seed

 

I come home

With my fishing rod and two perch

Wrapped in newspaper

I’m thirsty

But I can wait

 

The ivy is still green

And dark in the dusk

Like some creature’s fur

Fringing the branches and the pole

 

The old hermit gleams in my eyes

For a minute

Greedy and cold

Eric Rawson lives in Pasadena and teaches at the University of Southern California. He is a former Teaching-Writing Fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the author of Banana Republic and The Hummingbird Hour. His work has appeared in numerous periodicals, including Slate, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Iowa Review, and Commonweal.

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Published in the May 20, 2011 issue: View Contents
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