Skip to content

Log Out

×

Poetry

Audio: Read by the author. 

 

Warm morning on our back deck— 
slow yoga of the bamboo, 
discipline of the squirrel.
Patience of the chestnut snack 
dropped and lost into a dry
leaf shuffle, then found. Gray claws 
in the green and tan bamboo
hear behind me. Slow wave 
on the back deck. want joy 
I do not know have been 
livingwant peace beyond 
the bounds of my own body. 
Some life in the afterlife.
Some trees, too. A little bird- 

song even. The way I get
up and move on: all that gone— 
days like my lost eyelashes,
just dry leaves curled there and here, 
a few in the gutter, one
or two at my feet, before
someone sweeps the fallen all away.
Is anyone incapable of finding 
a figure for loss? Is there 
actual silence inside
the body? Actual light as well? 
I can’t decide if I want this 
world or another.
Better not; I’d better not. 

 

 


Andy Eaton is the author of the chapbook Sprung Nocturne (Lifeboat) and a Hoyns Fellow at UVA. His poems appear in Colorado Review, Kenyon Review (Online), Ploughshares, and Yale Review. 

Image depends on its subscribers and supporters. Join the conversation and make a contribution today.

+ Click here to make a donation.

+ Click here to subscribe to Image.


The Image archive is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Receive ImageUpdate, our free weekly newsletter featuring the best from Image and the world of arts & faith

* indicates required