Verge by Mark Doty

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend June 2, 2014   Verge   Mark Doty

A month at least before the bloom and already five bare-limbed cherries by the highway ringed in a haze of incipient fire                              —middle of the afternoon, a faint pink-bronze glow. Some things wear their becoming:                                       the night we walked, nearly strangers, from a fevered party to the corner where you’d left your motorcycle, afraid some rough wind might knock it to the curb, you stood on the other side of the upright machine, other side of what would be us, and tilted your head toward me over the wet leather seat while you strapped your helmet on, engineer boots firm on the black pavement. Did we guess we’d taken the party’s fire with us, somewhere behind us that dim apartment cooling around its core like a stone? Can you know, when you’re not even a bud but a possibility poised at some brink? Of course we couldn’t see ourselves, though love’s the template and rehearsal of all being, something coming to happen where nothing was…                                            But just now I thought of a troubled corona of new color, visible echo, and wondered if anyone driving in the departing gust and spatter on Seventh Avenue might have seen the cloud breathed out around us as if we were a pair of—could it be?—soon-to-flower trees.              Copyright @ 2014 by Mark Doty. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “Often we don’t seem to know when something new—maybe something major—is beginning. ‘Falling in love’ is, in truth, a recognition of something that’s already happened; when you know you’re in love, you’ve already arrived there. But can you ever tell when you’re just on the brink of something exhilarating, disruptive, lovely?” —Mark Doty   Mark Doty is the author of numerous books of poems, including Deep Lane, which is forthcoming from W. W. Norton in 2015. He is a professor/writer-in-residence at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Most Recent Book by Doty   Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems (Harper Perennial, 2009) “Hey You” by Adrian Blevins “My Heart” by Kim Addonizio “The Emperor” by Matthew Rohrer Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038