Sunday, May 12, 2019

DEVIN JOHNSTON ~







Along the Little Piney



Fingers impatient

with the buttons of a shirt,

desperate to shed

accustomed constraints,

you strip down

as if aflame,

then pause demurely

to hang your clothes

on a crown

of upturned roots.



How is it? Cold!

wading through

foam and twigs,

caught between

desire and lassitude,

having kept

apart too long.

A current wrinkles 

around your legs

and the river lifts

above itself

as fog.




_________________

Devin Johnston
Mosses and Lichens
Farrar, Straus, Giroux
2019