Richard Widerkehr
Deep In May
on the anniversary of my mother's death
Wind fills the alders, deep in May,
as if it didn't know any other song,
and certain wells can't open until
something under the wind tells them to.
A song no ring can wed, neither flesh
nor smoke, it waits, whether to enter
or forget, I can't say. Enter and forget?
Guess we say things we can't see,
the wind and I. Anyway, I don't mind
if the wind, thin as my mother's wrist,
has twigs and red birds to give
someone else. When it bends
the branches and one of us listens,
perhaps the other one rests.
Bio
Richard Widerkehr earned his M.A. from Columbia University and won two Hopwood first prizes for poetry at the University of Michigan. He has two book-length collections of poems: The Way Home (Plain View Press) and Her Story of Fire (Egress Studio Press), along with two chapbooks. Tarragon Books published his novel, Sedimental Journey, about a geologist in love with a fictional character. Recent work has appeared in Rattle, Floating Bridge Review, Gravel, Sweet Tree Review, Cirque, Crack The Spine, Jewish Literary Journal, Penumbra, Sediments, and Salt River Review. Other poems are forthcoming in Measure, Naugatuck River Review, and Mud Season Review. He's worked as a writing teacher and, later, as a case manager with the mentally ill. He co-edits poetry for Shark Reef Review. His new book, In The Presence Of Absence, will come out from MoonPath Press in Fall 2017.