by Daniel Lusk
For some, it’s a robin.
For him, a spider in the sink.
A yellow birch down
across the lane, white slush
a hand’s breadth deep,
floating on the mud.
These holes in the ground,
these smallest of caves,
dwellings of the meek: voles,
yellow-spotted salamanders.
The rewards of raking appear
because our heads are bowed.
A patch of blue sky
opening in the clouds,
warm wind in urgent gusts.
Across the woods, beginning
on the tips of a maple tree
by the pond, a single red filament
appears like a wound.
Somewhere nearby
the she-bear lifts her head.
Daniel Lusk is author of six poetry collections, among them The Shower Scene from Hamlet, The Vermeer Suite, KIN, Lake Studies: Meditations on Lake Champlain (with companion audiobook, The Inland Sea: Reflections), Kissing the Ground: New & Selected Poems, a memoir, Girls I Never Married, and other books. Recipient of a 2016 Pushcart Prize for his genre-bending essay “Bomb” (New Letters), and other honors, Daniel’s work has appeared in dozens of literary journals and anthologies, among them Poetry Ireland Review, The Massachusetts Review, Salamander, Poetry, American Poetry Review, and The North American Review. An Iowa native, he lives in Vermont.
Hawaii Pacific Review 