Running Through the Trees
I’ve decided to run among the trees—
to leap over clover, and wild onion,
to keep running toward the horizon—
It’s so beautiful, my eyes water and burn.
The splendor is like a fiery star
come out of the night— to ignite the world!
I cannot feel my body. I do not exist.
The monarchs are here: where I’ve stopped
they alight on my forearm! and all I can do
is kneel and cry, kneel and cry...
It’s so painfully beautiful to see their wings
slowly lift, then lower in pure delight.
The way the clover lifts praise to the sky.
Every body raised high— earth, untouched.
Ahrend Torrey is the author of This Moment (Pinyon Publishing, 2024), If it’s darkness we’re having, let it be extravagant: The Jane Kenyon Erasure Poems (Pinyon Publishing, 2024), For What Are the Blossoms Reaching? (Limited Artist’s Edition, American Academy of Bookbinding, 2023), Ripples (Pinyon Publishing, 2023), Bird City, American Eye (Pinyon Publishing, 2022), and Small Blue Harbor (Poetry Box Select, 2019). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, Slippery Elm Literary Journal, storySouth, The Greensboro Review, The Westchester Review, Welter, and West Trade Review, among others. He lives in Chicago with his husband, Jonathan, their two rat terriers, Dichter and Dova, and Purl, their cat.
Amethyst Review 