You asked to be in the haul of slow pleasure:
the arrival light, the fish-
scale light, flap hole light, that heroic
particular
declaration, and the immense ocean beside it as a slick-skirted tuning fork.
Though you didn’t know to ask
it showed what cannot be held down.
Then the ocean retracting, horizontal, a blue wash
and eventide long and broody.
You got here to begin with not knowing
and see it gives you enough.
Another week the blurred rain steers to wet platters of fields.
One by one, days revive, repeat, displace—
a mercy. The glaciers
become diminutive.
Photo by Bob Godwin.
Lauren Camp is the author of five books, most recently Took House (Tupelo Press). She is the recipient of a Dorset Prize and was a finalist for the Arab American Book Award. An emeritus fellow of the Black Earth Institute, she has received support from Storyknife Writers Retreat, Denver Botanic Gardens, and the Taft-Nicholson Center. In 2022, she will be Astronomer-in-Residence at Grand Canyon National Park in 2022. www.laurencamp.com
Featured image courtesy the poet.
