Recognitions
In a corner the news runs backward.
First the burnt headland, then the fire
paints old growth over the hills
the deer return from.
In the mirror, the streetlight
draws shadows in the room and I listen
to the song the newborn robins make.
The mother straddles the nest and makes the air
into spring air.
I sing their anthem, but I sing it in reverse.
As the rose grew all winter giving petals
to the dead grass
as gulls circled the small pond
we fished from the bridge, casting
out over fatal distance.
Now the deer out from the dead end
into the cone of light and bow to the grass.
Not as I did then, but in passing
I see them.
The poppies open their heads
and loose their fragile gowns.
What’s left behind is tender green
but not more beautiful.
Evan Goldstein is a poet and educator from upstate New York, who graduated from SUNY Geneseo in 2017. He holds an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and teaches English at Connecticut State Community College, Tunxis. His poems have appeared in Poetry Daily, Poetry London, Tyger Quarterly, and Great River Review, and his first poems appeared in Gandy Dancer.