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Anniversary

By Dan Beachy-Quick b. 1973 Dan Beachy-Quick

You are for me as you cannot be

For yourself, chaos without demand

To speak, the amethyst nothing

Hidden inside the trinket shop’s stone,

Dark eyes dark asterisks where light

Footnotes a margin left blank. You

Don’t look up to look up at the sky.

Your ears parenthesize nothing

That occurs, that I keep from occurring,

In the poem, on the page, as you are

For me, not a shadow, but a shade

Whose darkness drops from no object

But is itself yourself, a form of time

Spanning nothing, never is your name.

Source: Poetry (September 2009).

Biography

Poet and essayist Dan Beachy-Quick was born in Chicago and raised in Colorado and upstate New York. He was educated at Hamilton College, the University of Denver, and the University of Iowa.

Beachy-Quick's poetry collections include North True South Bright (2003); Mulberry (2006), a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for poetry; and This Nest, Swift Passerine (2009). He is also the author of A Whaler's Dictionary . . .

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