Rush of rim and black rock, soar
and cinematic pitch—it was
that vast: canyons, wheat fields, thunder
clouds at night—bend of knees
and London was a gabled scene
with water slides, spires and nave—
Paris.
Bridges soft with snow
benevolent as Whitman’s gaze. You
were there
and so I carried you, oceanic
downward drift of weightlessness to
earthen nests of waking waiting.
Not fire’s hour,
not Icarus. Not father failure. Earth.
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.