By Richard Widerkehr
Sometimes when I walk home on the road,
mist sits in the hills, dividing their dark green
from darker green. There’s the lake,
then hills and mist and hills and sky–
the white mist like a river floating sideways
up the hills, spread out in billows,
thinning into bits and scraps. It’s as if
things had become clearer, more themselves.
The gray sky lets in more light than I expect.
It seems so close, piled up on the hills
like a second lake. And someday I’ll go
far away, not on a road, maybe deeper
into green and white, and there won’t be
windows, doorsills, paper, socks, or spoons.
First published by Bitterroot and reprinted in The Way Home by Richard Widerkehr (Plain View Press).
Copyright 204 Widerkehr
Richard Widerkehr ’s fourth book of poems, Night Journey, was published by Shanti Art Press, which will also bring out his next one, Missing The Owl, in the fall of 2024. Main Street Rag brought out his previous book, At The Grace Cafe; Moonpath Press published In The Presence of Absence, and Plain View Press brought out The Way Home. He has three chapbooks and one novel, Sedimental Journey, published by Tarragon Books. His work has appeared in Atlanta Review, Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily, and many others. He won two Hopwood first prizes for poetry at the University of Michigan, three prizes in The Bridge’s annual contests, and first prize for a short story at the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference. He has been a poetry reader at SHARK REEF Literary Magazine for 12 years.
All work by Richard Widerkehr
