June 2015
I spent many years walking the deserts and climbing the mountains of Southern California. Now I spend time in the Eastern Forests from Maryland to Vermont and practice woodworking near the Anacostia River. I hold a PhD in Writing from the University of Houston. My poetry collections are The Structure of Desire (Little Red Tree 2012) winner of a 2013 Nautilus Award in Poetry, a chapbook, The Language of Birds (Finishing Line 2011) and a forthcoming collection, The Book of Maps. Recent honors include the National Hackney Literary Award in Poetry, Lindberg Foundation International Poetry for Peace Prize (in Israel), and Potomac Review Prize. My work has appeared in Atlanta Review, Asian Cha and Aesthetica. Currently I work in Washington, DC. and am an associate fiction editor at JMWW. More at: wflantry.com.
A Season's Requiem
She says "An autumn feeling now descends
on June." It's true. A yellowed cherry leaf
spins down to a mown lawn. The darkened air
turns afternoon to evening, and rain
accumulates in half-scythed roadside ponds.
Along the Anacostia, downed trees
thrust their last barren limbs, almost in prayer,
towards those rocks where our lost pathway ends.
But this is no December, when I first
heard her sing "Ave", answering my grief,
grafting her harmonies across my pain,
changing my loosened tethers into bonds,
her voice, like shifted days, answers my thirst
with early rain, and brings to mourning, ease.
©2015 W.F. Lantry