Emily Rosko is the author of two books: Prop Rockery, winner of the 2011 Akron Poetry Prize,
and Raw Goods Inventory, awarded the 2005 Iowa Poetry Prize. She is editor of A Broken Thing: Poets on the Line (U of Iowa P, 2011) and poetry editor at Crazyhorse literary journal. She is assistant professor at the College of Charleston.
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Tally
Some of us get impatient, some of us so
tiredly world-notched. The sky an apparent
no the sun won’t riot against. Bone-barked
sycamore not letting go. Some handful
of what’s better than and sorted by who
figures who. Any song will get us started:
a chorus-filled racket the crickets tune to.
We could build silence a palace, canopied
by moss-coated water oaks (they have
a boat inside them, a dream to go afloat);
or, count the strokes the saw would wear
through. No matter what we lose. Notepebbled,
the faraway river worries its bank
as everything we hurry to see goes gone.
I felt like the sound of a harp
and all else
wind-strung. Seed pinwheels
of the oak, airplane propellers
dividing the air
in spring. A sound the ear
cannot catch; nor the mind
bending back to afternoons
of anywhere else. I could have
sat in the sun-patch all day.
The tulips in agreement.
The unmarvelled cocoons
twined in the firs and sumac.
I have not thought of this
in some time. Circling
the house for signs:
robin shells, fist-sized
young rabbits, snails,
the short red nub of new
leaf on the roses. I do not
know the air, but I do. I’m ever
so unsure this was once
there. The day divided
by grass blades, some green
thing bounding up the soil.
Clouds sweeping by
in a hurry, the blue with
no place else to go.