TOM MONTAG - POEMS

Tom Montag is most recently the author of In This Place: Selected Poems 1982-2013. He is a contributing editor at Verse-Virtual. In 2015 he was the featured poet at Atticus Review (April) and Contemporary American Voices(August) and at year's end received Pushcart Prize nominations from Provo Canyon Review and Blue Heron Review. Other poems will be found atHamilton Stone Review, The Homestead Review, Little Patuxent Review, Mud Season Review, Poetry Quarterly, Third Wednesday, and elsewhere.

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                                        I SPEAK
 
of sky,
blue or
 
grey, of
light and
 
darkness,
the trees.
 
I speak
of love,
 
perhaps
too much.
 
The world
is what
 
the world
is and
 
my heart
is not,
 
by half,
enough.
______________________
 

                              WHERE YOU STAND
 
In wind this time.
There, shelter. Sun
 
or shadow or
the green sweep
 
of field. The woods.
We know nothing
 
for certain. Here
would be silence.
 
Somewhere the song
of the cricket,
 
so far away
you can't hear it.
 
Where you stand
makes the difference.
 
______________________
 
                                          LIGHT WRITES
 
its lines
in the bark
 
of trees.
The wind
 
sings. This
morning
 
you know
I know
 
nothing.
 
______________________
 
                                       AT EVENING
 
Some small
sweet motion
 
she makes.
She does not
 
know she is
the beginning
 
and the end
of the day.
 
Where she goes,
she takes the
 
light with her;
she wears it
 
like flesh. Or
her flesh is
 
the light,
and tonight's
 
stillness
her silence.
 
______________________
 
                                THIS ELECTION CYCLE
 
How simple we must seem
to those creatures out at
the edge of our crystal-
ball universe who are
watching us. By simple
I mean blind and greedy
and stupid, I suppose.
From where they are to where
we are, distance isn't
measured only in light-
years, but also in terms
of the word they use for
neighborliness, or lack
thereof. "No," they say, "they
aren't ready to join us,
and from what we can see,
they may never be."