“If I had stayed to strike the match ends of stars in poetry’s cave / instead of trying to break the worst dark night over my knees, / you might have had your poet now, someone who’d weave / a blanket against the cold, who’d bury every grave inside a grave. / If I had stayed to echo each fist of smoke, to work the soul’s lathe / and shape a world you already knew by rote, […], / I’d never know to cut the twisted vines from your heart’s withered trees, / to spread my wings above your fire, or pull the dagger from the Milky Way.”
— Richard Jackson, from “The Cave,” Broken Horizons (Press 53, 2018)
