(Dann Zepeda/Unsplash)

For a time we will move lightly.

The ash of evening fills the fields.
     We don’t know where to go. We go.

Others will come to tell us when
     the worst is over, but we will
          not believe them. First love or last

love, it leaves us like abandoned
cities, ungoverned; where houses
     stood, the wilderness returning.

Eric Rawson lives in Pasadena and teaches at the University of Southern California. He is a former Teaching-Writing Fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the author of Banana Republic and The Hummingbird Hour. His work has appeared in numerous periodicals, including Slate, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Iowa Review, and Commonweal.

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Published in the June 2022 issue: View Contents
Topics
Poetry
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