Van Hartmann Verse-Virtual 2016 March

March 2016

I live in Norwalk, Connecticut, with my wife, fellow poet Laurel Peterson, and I am a Professor of English at Manhattanville College. I have published a book of poems, Shiva Dancing (Texture Press, 2007), a chapbook, Between What Is and What Is Not (The Last Automat Press, 2010), and individual poems in various journals.

Visitation

Your laughter comes and goes
like the moon
that awakened me at four a.m.
staring wide-eyed through my
open window,
a light beyond the screen
that contracted and grew,
a pulsing wave as thick as matter,
like gravity, that pulled my sight
into its spreading form,
until I gasped and ruptured it.

Up rose a tawny head,
a deer whose coat had caught
the moon’s full face
and fed it to my soul.
Its startled gaze fixed on mine,
brown depths immeasurable,
then off it shot, a particle of light
shrinking into the night,
sharp hooves striking a fading echo,
the memory of your laugh,
against the summer ground.