Buckeye

MICHAEL C. PETERSON    OF RIVERS: A CHAPBOOK


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Summer’s pension ended with
the coloration of the spring.
To tell it somehow else
is another thing.
The daffodils could have made me
see summer thus, with what–
a measure of faith?
Sappho says the sun falls straight
and the crickets and eucalyptus
and their heated ceaseless singing
but that’s backwards or westward
or what have you.
What have I here but rivers pushing silt
nothing to look through and see
and say what is seen before it
passes, is gone.
Nothing clean.
Endless mayfly, sunfish, sun.
Branches so lean you think them
unable to hold much when time comes
but time will tell me what will drop.
Cherry, chestnut, apple, rot.
Shiner on my acreage.
Contusion of my spring.






MICHAEL C. PETERSON earned his MFA in poetry at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. He is currently completing his PhD as the Elliston Fellow in Poetry at the University of Cincinnati. His work is most recently forthcoming in journals such as Memorious, Blackbird, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference.

SELECTIONS FROM OF RIVERS APPEAR IN VOLUME 49.3