Border Hour

By; Derek Thomas Dew

Falling denser.

Smoke trees with trees.

Winter comes to a balloon

a town is unable to chase.

Again, what isn’t you

has talked me out of the whole thing.

Come the festivals,

none can the day

that I run from ask.

/

Hunger is having

to move

to still this place.

The snow until a lone pine.

The cord that snaps through the river’s ice

when I see someone

who’s seen you.

/

Water squeezed

from wet bark chips

underfoot

has it: eventually,

you’ll want to be with the others.

A lit candle will hide you.

Stone’s asking is gone.

/

How to leap to the back of the field.

The broken lamps do more broken.

Workers will step beneath the town,

its pipes will thaw.

The wind will split

on a frozen jackdaw.

And how to be there.

How to be there and

how to see clearer

and clearer into less

and less.

---

Derek Thomas Dew’s debut collection of poetry, "Riddle Field," received the Test Site Poetry Prize and is out October 2020 from University of Nevada Press. His literary work has appeared in a number of anthologies, and his poetry has been published in a variety of journals, including Interim, Twyckenham Notes, The Maynard, The Curator, Two Hawks Quarterly, Tempered Runes Press, bee house journal, and Hawaii Pacific Review. He is a winner of an Oregon Opportunity Grant and an Omnidawn Publishing Workshop Scholarship. He currently lives in Oregon.