February
In the snowpacked sky
ghosts of birds
parse simply :
a green wall the wind
addresses, a torrential
uprooting.
An offering,
a slow language
How does one do anything.
In some fashion. In the weather :
• • •
History : Zero
In one story, a lighthouse keeper.
He calls Lake Michigan the sea.
To keep light is a kind of mythology.
It is of the gods.
To myth :
to stand alone on the shore of the sea, to wait :
• • •
History : February
Bob Hicok has written poems about his native Michigan.
He says February is thirteen months long in Michigan.
I correspond to early February.
February is thirteen still skies and the snap of hardened snow.
There is a form traveling over it.
Look, I am dressed.
History is a brightness the world is never right for.
How to reconcile this with the problem of
February sun through ponderosa pine :
this is not a problem.
Still :
• • •
History : One
Forget about history.
Forget about America.
What you know is the acting out of eternity, eyes to stars.
You wish stars would start acting like stars.
You know :
It is desirous of emotions, something absolute.
The moment before waking.
This is the common mood.
So common, so itself.
The hardest thing to come to terms with :
a story no better or worse than others.
It amounts to fashion :
• • •
David Doran has an MFA from Colorado State University; poems and reviews have appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, MARGIE, Colorado Review, Word For/Word, and elsewhere. After teaching for several years, he now leads the strategy for Oneupweb, a digital marketing agency. He lives in northern Michigan with his wife and three sons.