Ryan Wilson
The Call
Buried, at three, in quilts and pillows, I
Heard grown-up voices coming through the wall
Quietly, and tall stars nailed night to the sky
Beyond my window, and my world, where all
Was darkness and the bony hands of trees
Reaching out through the marbled earth like men
Interred before their time, desperate to seize,
With starving lungs, the fire of breath again.
My brother slept beside me like the dead.
I tossed, turned. Spiraling into my sleep,
I heard coyotes howl, and sat up in bed,
My mind unfenced, and freed from leaping sheep,
Then rose, to seek what I could not possess,
Life howling in the dark hills’ wilderness.
Notes for a New Regime
after Archilochus, 8.21.2017 A.D. / 4.6.648 B.C.
Nothing’s unthinkable, nothing forbidden:
There are no wonders now, since God decrees
Midday a darkness, and the sun’s lamp’s hidden
While it still burns. Terrified, the people mourn.
From now on, every human hope will die
Unrealized. No one will wonder, should
Dolphins and deer swap homes, and someone spy
Deer breasting waves, happier in loud seas
Than in the mainland homes where they were born,
While dolphins frolic in the mountain wood.
Ryan Wilson is the author of The Stranger World (Measure Press, 2017), winner of the Donald Justice Poetry Prize, and How to Think Like a Poet (Wiseblood, 2019). His work appears in periodicals such as Best American Poetry, Five Points, The Hopkins Review, The New Criterion, The Sewanee Review, and The Yale Review. The Editor-in-Chief of Literary Matters, he teaches at The Catholic University of America.