Poem
Claudia Emerson
VORTEX
VORTEX
VORTEX
The town’s trees, roomy with winter, have begunof late to fill with them, a settling
that commences with dusk. The widows complain –
claim they can smell them, can hear them shuffling
in the trees, a wing hitting a branch a sound
sharp, they say, as ice cracking. They cannot
sleep. And so you form a committee, convening
with shotguns to fire every night into the darkling
congregation. Every night, the air resounds
with that resolve, and every dusk they return
with theirs, circle, a lazy familiar vortex
around a drain, an old appointment they keep
with an inescapable place; this argument
no way, Claude says, to be any less afraid.
© 2015, Claudia Emerson/Kent Ippolito
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VORTEX
The town’s trees, roomy with winter, have begunof late to fill with them, a settling
that commences with dusk. The widows complain –
claim they can smell them, can hear them shuffling
in the trees, a wing hitting a branch a sound
sharp, they say, as ice cracking. They cannot
sleep. And so you form a committee, convening
with shotguns to fire every night into the darkling
congregation. Every night, the air resounds
with that resolve, and every dusk they return
with theirs, circle, a lazy familiar vortex
around a drain, an old appointment they keep
with an inescapable place; this argument
no way, Claude says, to be any less afraid.
VORTEX
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