Since 2014, I’ve posted one poem that I’ve written in the past month on the last day of April, to celebrate National Poetry Month. This April, I’ve been unusually busy, and managed to write only one poem. But that still counts, so I’m going to post it, because this minor tradition in my life is more important than first publication rights.

After Wendell Berry

“Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.”

-Wendell Berry, “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front”

Is there even a right direction?
I get lost on the simplest trails
in the deep green forehead
of a someone else’s paradigms.

In the cemetery at sunset: a fox,
dissolving into the daylight’s gravel
between statues over strangers,
zigzagging like a Rube Goldberg machine.

The moment came without instruction,
so without a cue I chased the animal
across the grass and between the grief,
getting lost above the strangers.

Or maybe the fox was never there,
another trick of the rusty dusk.
This moment also came without instruction,
so I learned to chase myself,
but learning is a generous word.

-jk