After Wine
- After Wine
I thought of the Middle Eastas I washed the lonewhole wine glass
after sweeping upa thousand fragments,one shard long and jagged
like the boundarydemarcation on a mapwhere a sacred river
divides a people,and many tiny crystalsno longer dancing
as they did the night beforein the lancing lightof the near-full moon
that must also have burstinto bedrooms over therewhere others were making love. [End Page 33]
Jim Tilley earned a doctorate in Physics from Harvard University. He retired in 2001 after a 25-year career in insurance and investment banking. In 2008, he won Sycamore Review's Wabash Prize for Poetry, and in 2009, he was named co-winner of the New England Poetry Club's Firman Houghton Award. His poems have been published in Southern Review, Southern Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, Tar River Poetry, New Delta Review, and other journals. He resides with his wife in Bedford Corners, New York.
