By Sydney Lea
Feature image: Flight of the Magnolia, 1944 by Paul Nash

we’re visitors here of course
we live out our precious stories
imagine they’re legacies
until we don’t anymore
we settle for anecdotes

we shuffle along but behave
all the while as if we were dancing
or acting some crucial part
until we don’t that is
we assume we’re safe at home

we do until we don’t
we consider our senses eternal
a strange idea to be sure
a fox crossed in front of our house
this morning just after dawn

against the snow he looked perfect
as Dürer’s paragon
I say I’ll see him in mind
forever we don’t speak of death
we don’t until we do

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Sydney Lea, a former Pulitzer finalist, recently published his thirteenth collection of poems, “Here.” Shortly ago, Able Muse published “The Exquisite Triumph of Wormboy,” a graphic mock epic in collaboration with former Vermont Cartoonist Laureate James Kochalka.

Website: www.sydneylea.net

Feature image: Purchased with assistance from the Friends of the Tate Gallery, the Art Fund and a group of donors 1999. Image released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported) Photo © Tate, London.