Michael Gessner Verse-Virtual 2016 December

December 2016

I live in Tucson with my wife Jane, a watercolorist, and with our dog, Irish. Our son Chris, writes for screen in L.A. My more recent work has appeared in The North American Review, The French Literary Review, Verse Daily, and others. My most recent collections are Transversales (BlazeVOX, 2013,) and Selected Poems (FutureCycle, 2016).

Utility

Opposed. We are opposed
at every turn,
or say, as a favor is found,
the neighbor who has suffered
a loss passes
through the trees of his yard.

It is the end of a run.
Blackbirds flutter up
mixed among doves.
We are off again.

Language will never again mean
what it means here:
grief in the drowning river,
the wet soil seeking words,
the weight of field workers,
those creatures of utility
unable to lift their heads
in the orchards sleeping

the sleep of St. Presence the Divine,
between extremes they say in turn
‘I will do it once more—for you,’
a son or daughter, but it was all
for tedium, the daily certitudes
deep as organ tones, the security
of cells in the office place,
or the plant, clear as an appointment

book, those white assignments
of the foundry, the life
of the always mediocre who rise
in restraint, in a schedule
that stretches itself between
night waves. My neighbor has another
wife, & walks through the trees
of his yard at noon.

Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -FF