By Richard Levine
A barking arrowhead of geese
shot the moon on a rainy night.
Warm and dry in our dreams, we heard
their barks and wet-feathered crossing,
and shivered and held each other
against their miles of drenching risk.
They could have been war or climate
refugees, fleeing from the ruins
of once happy, fruitful lives.
Or like us, glimpsing ourselves in
shop windows and puddled reflections,
hoping to arrive in a prayer of wings,
though fists of wind pound at our door,
as if night were raining darkness.
Richard Levine is the author of Taming the Hours: An Almanac with Marginalia, Now in Contest (Fernwood Press, 2023), Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press, 2019), Contiguous States (Finishing Line Press, 2018), and five chapbooks, including A Tide of a Hundred Mountains (Bright Hill Press, 2012), winner of the 2012 Bright Hill Chapbook Prize. An Advisory Editor of BigCityLit.com and co-editor of Invasion of Ukraine 2022: Poems, he received the 2021 Connecticut Poetry Society Award. His poetry appears on the websites of American Life in Poetry, Poetry Foundation and the American Academy of Poets. A Vietnam veteran, his work is archived in LaSalle University’s Special Collections Library.
Website: richardlevine107.com.