Rebecca Hazelton
Yesterday the windmills, yesterday miles
of drifts, and between these things landscape
and vista, the cars carving the highway
from the white, and today
the blowsy peony, rose imposter, today
the river runs again and over, winter
is over the lock has tumbled open
and tumbling are the blossoms and the girls’ skirts
on the promenade like flags of countries
I want to visit. What I’ve known
in my body is my body smaller in hands larger,
what those hands have known is smaller
than I am, and I have measured that distance
between self and assumption
and it is the same as that between myself
and a counterfeit. If yesterday
a cold thing gathering power. If today
a bloom tattering to pieces in the wind.
Then the bee forgets home and must wander.
Then you’ve never known a love like mine.
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Rebecca Hazelton attended The University of Notre Dame for her MFA in poetry and completed her PhD at Florida State University. She was awarded a fellowship year as the Jay C. and Ruth Hall Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Creative Writing Institute , and also received a fellowship from Vermont Studio Center. Her poetry has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Salt Hill, Puerto del Sol, American Book Review, and Pleiades, and D.A. Powell chose “Book of Janus” for inclusion in Best New Poets 2011. Hazelton teaches creative writing at Beloit College. |