Audio: Read by the author. 

     

Should this mean adding the slow returns
in shadowed columns, currying to a glow the dappled
horse of her alone in winter stall, should winter stall
be gold with summer-windrowed hay, hay they
aired and cured, the sweeter for bedding and feeding.
Could she be leaning forward after faith, leaner for
the habit of not looking, promised to the long, dry
braid of disincentive with incentive. It takes
a kind of will. And then some time apart. Abashed,
crushed in—in earshot, still, of holding dear. Her
grazing won’t have asked to see.
Will have stood beyond velleity, the pollen path
of lightest wishing, the fair but faintest blues
of nothing almost carried out.

 

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Sarah Gridley is an associate professor of English at Case Western Reserve. Her poetry collections include Weather Eye Open, Green is the Orator (both from California), and Loom (Omnidawn). Her awards include the 2019 Green Rose Prize, the 2018 Cecil Hemley Award, and the 2019 Writer Magazine/Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America.