by Doug Bolling

You have sensed them at times
come close.
All the invisible things that fly
that weave you in and out
and depart without a word
only a prophecy that you are not
who you are.

The circles your travels have been.
A dozen years to bring you back
to this condition of shadow where
no sounds impede and the encrustations
of proper nouns keep to themselves.

You reach out to touch the memory
of yourself and it dissolves into
the brine of a backwater.

You ponder the lexicon they assigned
you at birth, how at times it glows
in the dark as though some distant god
is reconsidering.

Now as you drift along the shadows
you remember the cello behind a wall
in uncharted territory,
how it shapes the evening,
how it moves to some rhythm
you have never known,
how it leaves you behind
as the years have.

Doug Bolling’s poetry has appeared in numerous literary reviews including Water-Stone Review, Wallace Stevens Journal, Basalt, Poem, Blue Unicorn, The Inflectionist Review, Redactions, BlazeVOX, Chaffin Journal and Gravel Magazine among others. He has received five Pushcart nominations and has degrees from William & Mary and the University of Iowa. He has taught in colleges and universities in the midwest and currently lives in the greater Chicago area. He is a native of Kentucky and has published short fiction and poetry set in the mountains of Appalachia.