Poetry Magazine
On the Ground
When the collie saw the child
break from the crowd,
he gave chase, and since they both
were border-crossers,
they left this world.
We were then made of—
affronted by—silence.
The train passed Poste 5, Paris,
late arrival, no luck, no
enlarging commentary
magnified in any glass.
“The ineffable
is everywhere in language”
the speaker had said
in the huge hall where
I sat amongst coughers,
students, in the late
February of that year,
at the end of a sinuous
inquiry on sense and sound—
“and very close to the ground,” he’d said.
Like mist risen above
the feet of animals
in a far field north of here.
Source: Poetry (July/August 2012).
Poem Categorization
SUBJECT Living, The Mind, Youth, Nature, Animals, Arts & Sciences, Language & Linguistics
POET’S REGION U.S., Mid-Atlantic
Poetic Terms Free Verse
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