Jeremy Voigt

Here is a field,
and I cannot say
more, though the grey
clouds have come
in from the sea
which I can only hear
for the hill I have not
finished climbing—
it is traffic without sirens
almost human
in its seductive energies.
Dear hill, I have put
all the garbage cans away,
a large stone on each
so crows will not shudder
the infected foliage
trimmed from my life
across the alley.
Hill, here is a tree,
a madrona, which
I was told once is a good
place to die. Thank you
for allowing me my
disasters, hill, between
the tree peeling
and the sound of simple
waves. The sky moves
constantly as water.
I cannot avoid
the shame of being
the crisp leaves below
my father. The man
who kicked a goose
once on a beach
after it bit his shin.
Then, the girl crying
that bird sat on my lap
last night, and his reply:
go cuddle it now.
Hill, may we all hold
a kicked thing. May we all
kick such aggressive beauty.
That night the sea
rose up to the shore,
as always, filling something
that needed to be filled—
the same something
that knows it will soon empty.