Sycamores
- Sycamores
Dying two hundred timeswith as many rebirthssounds like a lot of work;
papering the earth redwithout so much as a war,no sacrifice, tears, eulogy.
& never the same sparrows,never knowing more thana season or two the living
bodies born in your arms.Remember how terrifiedwe were those long sleepless
nights huddled over cribswaiting for the absence of childto overtake us again?
What silence implies in a worlddefined by wail. Remember whenwe delivered your mother’s ashes
to the brook & how long it tookto look at water the same way?If only our children were trees [End Page 58]
we could watch them ghostall winter—shiver whitely, leafless,barely breathing—without all these
terrible prayers. We could celebratehow light returns as swiftly & foreveras when it left us. [End Page 59]
John Sibley Williams is the author of five collections, most recently As One Fire Consumes Another (Orison Poetry Prize), Skin Memory (Backwaters Prize, U of Nebraska P), and Summon (JuxtaProse Chapbook Prize, forthcoming). A twenty-three-time Pushcart nominee, Williams is the winner of numerous awards, including the Wabash Prize for Poetry, Philip Booth Award, and Laux/Millar Prize. He serves as editor of the Inflectionist Review and works as a poetry editor and literary agent.
