We are Not Alone
- We are Not Alone
In this, we are safe. At least bridges similarly strain to meet both shores: factory fires burn long after closing: sycamores struggle to hold a nest of eggs in their arms. Even the storms that shatter us hesitate a moment, as if in reverie, prayer, before making us what we are. I am steadying his body on an oak chair with one short leg. I am setting a place for ruin at the table between us. It's not his weight that forces the fall, not food that feeds him. All older versions of ourselves, broken enough, break in our care. & I still care what happens to the bridge once there's no river to span. I still burn, & night. As deer don't call the slowest among them father anymore. As the storm calms without ever entirely passing. [End Page 65]
John Sibley Williams is the author of nine poetry collections, most recently Disinheritance. An eleven-time Pushcart nominee and winner of various awards, John serves as editor of The Inflectionist Review. Publications include: Yale Review, Atlanta Review, Prairie Schooner, Midwest Quarterly, Sycamore Review, Massachusetts Review, Columbia, Third Coast, and Poetry Northwest.
