Sitting in the snowy cabin yesterday brought me a warm wave of appreciation for everything we’ve shared over the past month. Lines of this poem came to me throughout that afternoon, and seeing this morning how I had my head wedged up my ass firmly enough to figure out my bowels’ hunger for sandwiches but not the time and place of our final meeting, I spent today’s class time seeking atonement mostly by working on this poem. Perhaps the poem reaches conclusions divergent from what you came to this last day, but nevertheless, this poem is an expression of my deep gratitude for you all, how as poets and people you helped me along in finding a communion and confidence in poetry. Here’s to walking, into the forest of everything life holds.
Thanks,
Tyler
Walking Onward
Pale stubble has proliferated
only more amongst these dark greens.
the wrinkled face cringes, sagging
underneath the weight of unseen constellations’
frozen tears, grows to be too much,
one must keel over, break.
But it is February, the second day.
Sanctuary greeted me among this grey
peregrination in a fellowship of hearts
scattered, tilled, and cut from distant fields,
harvested to stay within this silo
for some hours. Urgent verses
wailed, composed the scripture of another day
sculpted to become our separate spheres’ validations.
Imminent anguish might emerge again,
coloring an absence in deformed shrill
outside the door, demand it be let in.
There are many awake, crying,
not of this feeble world. Look onwards
upon their cold crystal tears. Am I not
swaddled in reclusive warmth, this windowed interior?
Ideations wept before the sanctuary’s witness
in a thirty-day string of golden pearls, I might
go out again. I must go out again. The sphere of self
must be broken, and the constellations’ tears
thawed to run amongst my shards. We trust that warm days
will come again to soften old footprints.
We broke this mortal bread together
in this room. Forgiveness
will forge peace with death. I strive
to accept
that it might be enough.
The Walk of the Poem 