Forward Slash
When I’ve lived too late in my life and everyone else’s,
about the sun, in the end, I’ll do anyway what ice does—
stays if it must, or goes—and I’ll expect the outdoors
but get instead a room, along with the “is”
in “missing,” the “in” in “forgetting,” a few feelings
believed in, but just beside the point of having with ease,
with speed, seen pieces of what can’t happen, ideas
so fast that only years, if that, could get them back please.
Feature Date
- June 1, 2018
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Copyright © 2018 by Graham Foust
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission
Through branching clauses of off-kilter syntax, Graham Foust makes poetry in Nightingalelessness from the common stuff of conversations, including the ones bouncing around in our heads. “If you think you’ve seen it all you’ve seen one thing.” By observation and direct address, these poems surge forward as a way to retreat and reflect. They concern what Keats calls “the weariness, the fever, and the fret” of adulthood, the weight of time, when the music has stopped. Yet in the syncopation of action against uncertainty, thought against belief, Foust uncovers a wobbly new music.
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