The Way One Animal Trusts Another by Carl Phillips

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend July 19, 2016   The Way One Animal Trusts Another   Carl Phillips

Somewhere between what it feels like, to be at one with the sea, and to understand the sea as mere context for the boat whose engine refuses finally to turn over: yeah, I know the place— stumbled into it myself, once; twice, almost.  All around and in between the two trees that grow there, tree of compassion and—much taller— tree of pity, its bark more bronze, the snow              settled as if an openness of any kind meant, as well, a woundedness that, by filling it, the snow might heal…You know what I think? I think if we’re lost, you should know exactly where, by now; I’ve watched you stare long and hard enough at the map already…I’m beginning to think I may never not be undecided, about all sorts of things: whether snow really does resemble the broken laughter              of the long-abandoned when what left comes back big-time; whether gratitude’s just a haunted space like any other.  This place sounds daily more like a theater of war, each time I listen to it— loss, surprise, victory, being only three of the countless fates, if you want to call them that, that we don’t so much live with, it seems, as live for now among.  If as close as we’re ever likely to get, you and I, is this—this close—            Copyright © 2016 Carl Phillips. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “Something to do, maybe, with wrestling with the need to accept mystery as necessary between two people? Or if not necessary, a fact, all the same? Right now the poem seems a map of that wrestling.” —Carl Phillips   Carl Phillips is the author of Reconnaissance (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015).  He teaches at Washington University and lives in St. Louis, Missouri. Poetry by Phillips   Reconnaissance (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015)  "Hurricane Song" by Kevin Young "Theories of Time and Space" by Natasha Trethewey "On Disappearing" by Major Jackson Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends.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