from “3 Bewildered Landscapes” by Joanna Klink

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend October 9, 2014   from “3 Bewildered Landscapes”   Joanna Klink

STARS, SCATTERSTILL. Constellations of people and quiet. Those nights when nothing catches, nothing also is artless.  I walked for hours in those forests, my legs a canvas of scratches, trading on the old hopes—we were meant to be lost. But being lost means not knowing what it means. Inside the meadow is the grass, rich with darkness. Inside the grass is the wish to be rooted, inside the          rain the wish to dissolve. What you think you live for you may not live for.  One star goes out. One breath lifts inside a crow inside a field.            Copyright © 2014 by Joanna Klink. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “I wrote this poem after a three-day backpacking trip during which every possible thing went wrong.  We spent twelve hours of it lost in a valley, desperate from exhaustion.  At the time I was thinking about how easy it is to valorize the character-building qualities of ‘not knowing what will happen’ and ‘being lost’ when you’re not actually lost.” —Joanna Klink   Joanna Klink’s forthcoming book is Excerpts from a Secret Prophecy (Penguin, 2015). She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Montana. Most Recent Book by Klink   Excerpts from a Secret Prophecy (Penguin, 2015) "Just Before" by Jorie Graham "Did Not Come Back" by Lucie Brock-Broido "Language" by W. S. Merwin Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends.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