Letter from Deep Space
- Letter from Deep Space
The view’s not much.Sometimes faint constellationssweep like crows.But mostly shadows,almost the color of lily padsdeep under water.
No sound; not evenwavelengths of white noisewrithing like eelsin a satellite’s net.
I miss the dead fliesthat littered the sillsof windows on Earth.
The distance to nothingnessused to be infinite:dusk and a stray dogchasing down stars.Can you hear me? I’m shootingat houseflies with cannons—words fall back to Earth:
There were so many trees therethat a squirrel could cross two thousand miles—from Tyumen to Irkutsk—without touching the ground. [End Page 14]
Michael Lavers’s poems have appeared in Best New Poets 2015, Arts & Letters, West Branch, 32 Poems, The Hudson Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and elsewhere. He is the winner of the 2016 University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize. He teaches poetry at Brigham Young University.
