By Morgan Hamill

You’ve seen the corn grow tall twice already. The goats drop kids.  
The carpenter bees drill their holes and die. July stops 
feeling sultry; then it’s winter. You’ve been back to visit the city,  

where you recall the three a.m. dawn chorus,    a cacophony 
    set to streetlights, sun nowhere in sight.  
Out here, in the country, with no trees  
          on your property, 

mornings are silent.     Every morning is silent. 
Each morning, in your head, all that’s left  
is to make coffee,   go to work,     and keep working.  

You’ve done this before, had this idea  

that you have no ideas   
no words   
        that you’re trapped 
and might as well get off the horse. 

But  

here’s the thing: the horse knows to stop when you’re asking too much. 
it throws you off. 

And 

this is not how 
you’d meant to quit 

(you’d meant to quit 
but not like this) 

but here it is 
and here you are 

held by the hush that comes 
not because there is  silence  
but because everything listens. 

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Morgan Hamill’s poems have appeared in Cimarron Review, The Georgia Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, The Southern Review, and elsewhere.