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Tom Montag

LOSS

 

The girl.

The oneness of her motion

with the horse, fluid, eternal.

The sheen of the horse's mane,

the flowing curls of the girl

moving in wind towards autumn.

You want to bring them back,

the girl, the horse,

 

but you cannot. They are gone.

It was summer. You were young.

And now, as the grasses have

withered, you've lost them,

the girl, the horse, the mystery

of what you ever wanted.

A WRECKED MORNING

 

The storm leaves a wrecked

morning. The trees have

been whipped, the clouds blown,

 

and now I'm driving

with wind against me.

It is enough to have

 

survived, I suppose,

but I want a softer

light, a lesser wind,

 

a promise that something

will come of what was

lost to us again.

LATE IN THE DAY

 

The sad fall of evening.

Wind. Trees push the

darkness, the emptiness

 

at day's end. I wish

for a thousand years

of laughter. All I hear

 

is silence. Will it be

enough: this silence, my

turning towards the light?

Tom Montag is most recently the author of In This Place: Selected Poems 1982-2013. In 2015 he was the featured poet at Atticus Review (April) and Contemporary American Voices (August), with other poems at Hamilton Stone Review, The Homestead Review, Little Patuxent Review, Mud Season Review, Poetry Quarterly, Provo Canyon Review, Third Wednesday, and elsewhere.

 

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