BY JORY MICKELSON

Even Walt Whitman wanted

to put me into a city

of his own devising: brotherly

love. But I refuse his landscape, no

ferryboat, no trolley car, no high-rise

by him yet unseen. Instead give me

a field, this field, dazzled by light,

a dayfield. The blessing of sun

and air revealing green

in deep, empty glister.

Here the lover comes, even

as the light fades, to watch

it go, to watch the goose,

the sparrow, the owl, the slipform

lake, its shore a string. Every

feathered thing, beaded

and bereaved into an endless

Whitmanian line. Patiently

allowing the night, the tender

growing night.

Let no lover be found, not in

the city, not two men

hidden in its dirty scrawl

of noise, in concrete’s unbearable

narrowing—but let us be

received into this field. Two men

grasping hands, hands pressed

in prayer to wind, to darkness.

Two men pressed against the grass,

given to giving ourselves to one another.

Jory Mickelson's first book, Wilderness//Kingdom, is the winner of the Evergreen Award Tour from Floating Bridge Press, and won the 2020 High Plains Book Award in Poetry. Their work has been published in the US, Canada, and the UK. They live in the Pacific Northwest. To learn more, visit www.jorymickelson.com