Your poems have arrived. Sea
gulls wheeling toward shore
messages swarming
everywhere.
I ask you how a single poem
can take the whole earth
in its palm,
even time gathering there
in its silent wings.
How is it you left the Bay
of Biscay and didn’t send me
the news of death.
Uncle Samuel shriveled and
pale in his Bordeaux
apartment near the quai.
I ask if you witnessed his
last words and captured them
in a poem that can strike
through stone and make
a radiance out of
the dark.
About Doug Bolling
Doug Bolling's poems have appeared in Posit, Agave, Redactions, The Aurorean, REAL, Folia, and The Inflectionist Review, among others. He has received several Pushcart nominations and a Best of the Net nomination and has retired from college teaching. He lives in the greater Chicago area.
