What Rough Beast | 10 05 20 | Marjorie Moorhead

Marjorie Moorhead
Connection

          after “You Are the Everything” (R.E.M., 1988)
          for Max-Henry


Sometimes it feels I will never sleep
dark, dark is the night
Afraid of the world; the world we’ve made
dark is the night

Afraid of disconnection. Imagine riding
in a car; try to imagine—there is no internet!
The windows surround you
and point out the stars

Press your face to the glass
gaze out at the sky. It’s vast
and winking; spilling
with sparkles twinkling

You’re moving through space
white lines shoot by; a rhythm
to the night. Secure in this vessel
driven by others, you trust in the future…

Sometimes it feels I will never sleep
dark, dark is the night
Afraid of this world that we’ve made
dark, dark is the night

Go back to a sense of wonder Try look out
at the birds in your tree, living
outside of your window
they’re there for you to see. Why?

Put down, put down the phone. Use binoculars.
Yellow wings match perfectly the changing leaves.
See this blending has a purpose;
puzzle pieces nestle into their places

—Submitted on 09/27/2020

Marjorie Moorhead is the author of the chapbooks Survival: Trees, Tides, Song (Finishing Line Press 2019), and Survival Part 2: Trees, Birds, Ocean, Bees (Duck Lake Books 2020). Her poems have appeared in Sheila-Na-GigPorter House ReviewVerse-VirtualRising Phoenix ReviewAmethyst Review, and other journals, as well as in several anthologies, including most recently Covid Spring (Hobblebush Books, 2020). 

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