THURSDAY: How We Lose Ourselves

BY ALEXANDER ETHERIDGE

Copyright is held by the author.

Late February dark blows in

with a sudden gusting cold,
again claws of cold wind,
and the next page of grief turns —

The next plane of fire burns
into everything, again
burning, and no way back.

A ragged band of crows rises
from a stony, black-winter frost,
and again the seconds grow black.

What happens in our hearts
happens to the world. What’s lost
is gone and lost again —

And we give the road home away.

***

Image of Alexander Etheridge

Alexander Etheridge has been developing his poems and translations since 1998. His poems have been featured in The Potomac Review, Scissors and SpackleInk SacCerasus JournalThe Cafe ReviewThe MadrigalAbridged MagazineSusurrus Magazine, The Journal, Roi Faineant Press, and many others. He was the winner of the Struck Match Poetry Prize in 1999, and a finalist for the Kingdoms in the Wild Poetry Prize in 2022. His collection of poems, Find the Earth, will be available from Belle Point Press in 2024.