Better Half

F. Daniel Rzicznek

 

Flying to the clocktower one at a time the sparrows

Were a much needed distraction sleep left me with nothing

To report nonexistent rungs on an extending ladder

Then I was seeing things as things and not through them

The deep unlit lanterns of the glass hills I thought it had

Become another way but noon was midnight and vice

Versa eternally desire over memory equaled nostalgia

And the utmost of perception turned out to be pain

A cemetery embraced by fields of cement someone I had

Known from her life only no thoughts or fantasies or facts

No assumptions smoke cleared our heads most evenings

As the latest season hurried down unconcerned with us

Our worry for the split second sky it built get out she insisted

Open a window even then the dry fields stretched thinly on

 
 

F. Daniel Rzicznek’s most recent book of poetry is “Settlers” (Free Verse Editions/Parlor Press, 2019). He is coeditor of “The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry: Contemporary Poets in Discussion and Practice” (Rose Metal Press 2010). He teaches writing at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio.