O earth,
little landscaped
terrace of cold, coffered seed,
the restless sleep of ants,
heavy-jawed—
it is time to get serious about the sun.
Let us lift the giant like a carapace
from where his elbows and heels have drummed into moss
and sheared
wool, ice
and igneous rock of what remotest place has now
heard of us:
Desolation, Ittoqqortoormiit, Tristan, Nightingale—
Let it be spring by election,
time to take down the winter wreathes torn by birds.
Laurie Lamon has poems in The Atlantic, The New Republic, Plume, Ploughshares, J Journal, Innisfree Poetry Journal, The Literary Review, and others. She has published two poetry collections with CavanKerry Press: The Fork Without Hunger, and Without Wings. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and was selected by Donald Hall as a Witter Bynner Fellow in 2007. She currently holds the Amy Ryan Endowed professorship at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington, and is the poetry editor for the literary journal Rock & Sling. Her work is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Arts & Letters Journal of Contemporary Culture, and Innisfree Poetry Journal.