The Bottom Shelf Review

Winner of the William and Ivy Saylor Prize 2014

I’ve never felt more like

a vagabond, a wanderer,

a seeker, a watcher:

gnarled staff in mangled hand,

crooked and creaking

by every strike staving

off the soft, damp, petrichor;

stepping deeper into the bleak

mist thick with the dark dank

of leaves unkissed by the sun,

whispers of wind and ghosts on

the strained limbs of tired trees

whose lives are marked by rings of sleep.