What Rough Beast | Poem for May 18, 2017

William Prindle
The Waning Moon We Trust With Our Lives

At dusk the trees so brilliant green
In the western sun merge back
Into the dark again

Some young male’s machine shoots
Its backfires down the frontage road
Spooking the mares again

Shadows flaring over the fence line
Spreading that terror across the county
As in the days of the Klan

Whose ghosts try yet again really yet again
To stack up their fear like Depression dams
Against this innocent river

This implacable water carrying the Lovings
The Kings and Merediths and Evers
Rolling down as a mighty stream

Until justice is only the silence falling again
Over the land when the torches go back
To their caves again

Until now when the herd grazes again
Under the waning moon that we trust
With our lives to rise again.

 

William R. Prindle’s poems have appeared in The Pennsylvania Review, Written River, The Echo World, The Live Poets Society, and elsewhere. He lives in Fluvanna County, Virginia, with his wife and three horses.

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