Issue Thirty-Seven - Winter 2021

Meditations

By Andrew Michael Roberts

1
All afternoon doing nothing, the jade plant and I.

Don’t say we’re wasting our lives.

Seventeen crows have crossed the window: one trailing a silver
ribbon clenched in a fist.

One with a pane of grey sky where a wingfeather was.

2
While we slept, a grass spider spun its strands across the path
between the rosemary and the Makrut lime. And dawn strung
the lengths of its filaments with bells, and with its green light
set them ringing.

Fortunate, that my life followed me here, found me in this
place, where it paused in the wet grass and opened its eyes.

3
Even in October, lashed by wind, snared and spinning orangely
from a spider’s silk, this persimmon leaf knows the way.

I’ll follow it. Be its disciple.

Love the life that remains to me.

Copyright Roberts 2021

Andrew Michael Roberts is a poet from Oregon, where he lives with his wife Sarah and three beloved cats and works as a cardiac nurse. He is the recipient of the Iowa Poetry Prize, a Poetry Society of America National Chapbook Fellowship, and a Distinguished Teaching Award from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

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