January
Corey Harrison
You grasp the black spine of the rail.
The morning’s offering of frost
melts at your hand.
The snow-capped caws
and tinny trills of crows and
juncos
flit through the yard.
Spears of golden sunlight pierce
the bleeding snow. A lifetime ago,
your father built
the very fence that stretches,
now,
in a thick bold line
across the horizon of the yard,
and he stood,
bare-back muscles
flush with summer heat, and wiped his brow
and watched the shadows change.
You wonder, now, if the sun
and the birds
and the dry shock of icy air
crusting at the back of your throat
are not a gift, are not themselves the reason
for the gunpowder pop of the hammer strokes
in the high days of sunburn season,
the reason for his stretching dusky limbs
in the stretching dusky dark. A space
for this being after being.
To breathe and wait
and watch the shadows change.
Corey Harrison lives in Arkansas with his wife and three cats.