The Clockface Light

 

The Clockface Light

 

Up from the flat rock’s first skip on sleep’s lake,

believing you, hip high, the other way,

behind me, faced, I wonder why I hadn’t

snaked my lower arm beneath your ribs

and drawn your warm back to my needy chest.

 

I skitter on night’s surface, wide awake,

and stare into the plaster shadowed corners

of the room where the ceiling joins the walls.

 

We’re best a little earlier than this at night,

before we’ve made the turn to reclaim privacy.

 

 

Arthur Russell

 

 

I live in Nutley, New Jersey.  I’m an active participant in the Red Wheelbarrow poetry group in Rutherford NJ, and Brooklyn Poets.  I don’t have a ton of publications, but I have had a poem in Copper Nickel, and the Wilderness House Literary Review.  I also won second place in the 2022 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award contest.  I liked your site and wanted to give you a look at a couple of short poems.  If you like them, you’re free to use them. The names of these two are “On Death, and Why It Never Lasts,” and “The Clockface Light.”  Thanks for your time and for keeping the journal open.