Finding a Bible in an Abandoned Cabin

By Robert Wrigley b. 1951 Robert Wrigley

Under dust plush as a moth’s wing,

the book’s leather cover still darkly shown,

and everywhere else but this spot was sodden

beneath the roof’s unraveling shingles.

There was that back-of-the-neck lick of chill

and then, from my index finger, the book

opened like a blasted bird. In its box

of familiar and miraculous inks,

a construction of filaments and dust,

thoroughfares of worms, and a silage

of silverfish husks: in the autumn light,

eight hundred pages of perfect wordless lace.

Poem copyright ©2007 by Robert Wrigley, whose most recent book of poetry is “Earthly Meditations: New and Selected Poems,” Penguin, 2006. Poem reprinted from “The Hudson Review,” Vol. LIX, no. 4, Winter, 2007, by permission of Robert Wrigley.

Biography

Robert Wrigley was born in East St. Louis, Illinois. He was drafted in 1971, but was discharged as a conscientious objector. The first in his family to graduate from college, and the first male for generations to escape work in a coal mine, Wrigley earned his MFA from the University of Montana, where he studied with Madeline DeFrees, John Haines, and Richard Hugo.

Wrigley believes that poetry can influence the world and . . .

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