Guest Poem by William Virgil Davis

William Virgil Davis’s most recent book of poetry, his sixth, is Dismantlements of Silence: Poems Selected and New. His first, One Way to Reconstruct the Scene, won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize. His poetry has been published widely worldwide.

Journey

I step into my shadow
and the shadow goes away.

How many blackbirds
are sitting in that tree?

If snow fell sideways
would the flakes spin or stop?

Old cats eat slowly.

The colour I most want to inherit
is blue, colour of clouds and water.

When fog obscures the trees beside the lake,
boats disappear, are never seen again.

An evening like this
is one in a million.

Can you see where we are going?