Hollow
In the meadow there is this green undoing,
this diastolic thumping,
this deference to cloud-light,
milkweed floss,
and the torn, red-tipped wing of blackbird
rendered by hawk-strike;
all becoming equal parts
suffering into resignation,
maybe faith.
I have nowhere else
to go with my shovel
but out here, into the past
making holes.
Sanctuary
is not what I would call it—
the goldenrod has gone
to umber dry stems, bones fill the earth,
it bends and swallows—
but a single startled sunray
shimmers the back of the rabbit
darting from a swale
of orchard grass, follows it into the ground.
Timothy Geiger is the author of the poetry collections Weatherbox, (winner of the 2019 Vern Rutsala Poetry Prize from Cloudbank Books), The Curse of Pheromones, and Blue Light Factory. His newest collection is In a Field of Hallowed Be, (September 2024, Terrapin Books). He lives on a small farmstead in Northwest Ohio and teaches Creative Writing, Poetry, and Book Arts at the University of Toledo.
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