And on the Third Day

By Andrew Allport Andrew Allport

We called off the search,

and the weary climbed down from the glacier

with their dogs exhausted in the spring sun

too tired to eat the ice in their paws.

We had called his name, mostly for show,

a ritual that kept us moving: in the high bowls,

their stunted pines predating the flood,

in the steep ravines sliding loose with scree,

loudly at first, then speaking it to each other

then spelling it out on forms required by law.

It is a form of praying, he claimed, to walk

out to the very edge of your life. Every time

the reply comes clear as a stone

at our thin crowns. It misses

almost every time, humming as it goes.

Source: The Body of Space in the Shape of the Human (New Issues Press, 2012)

Biography

Andrew Allport is the author of the book the body | of space | in the shape of the human (New Issues Press, 2012) and the chapbook The Ice Ship & Other Vessels (Proem Press, 2008). He holds a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California, and his poems and essays appear widely. The poem “An Unknown Shore” first appeared in ZYZZYVA and was later reprinted in Best New Poets 2006. Its first three . . .

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