All music must rise and fall

The flies buzz back clotting the hour

The days march in lock step into the flensed glare of the real

The cat drops an unblinking mouse in the shadow at your feet

Green ferns detonate in the earth just before sunrise

On the wall, a spider purls toward shore

Tonight, a candle, a congregation of crickets, rising and falling

And the soul is not a soul but a field welling in the mouth

Peter Grandbois is the author of eleven books, the most recent of which is The Three-Legged World (published as Triptych with books by the poets James McCorkle and Robert Miltner, Etruscan 2019). His poems, stories, and essays have appeared in over one hundred journals. His plays have been nominated for several New York Innovative Theatre Awards and have been performed in St. Louis, Columbus, Los Angeles, and New York. He is poetry editor at Boulevard magazine and teaches at Denison University in Ohio. You can find him at www.petergrandbois.com.