William Erickson
—
My Father's
Parents' House
Washington Coast
I wake
into that
splintered wooden
room of evening
youth is
simply one
perspective
on the sea
we listen to the water
in that unmaturable way
one tries not laughing
at the flimsy
little kite
our planet flies
City Center
Coyote
in the Park
it is safe
how in some hours
animals call
out distances
from that leeway
which listening affords
I know fear is
a softening bed
a road down which
a tracing fingers
found its own lips
on the masonry
William Erickson is not a water slide. He is not in bed with science. Though william becomes things frequently, there is no time to describe them. Try looking in West Branch, Mercurius, Afternoon Visitor, or in his few little chapbooks, or in his full-length book You Don’t Have to Believe in the World (April Gloaming, 2024). William is a sea of Bs and Os. At night his edges soak up a beach. The beach is in Washington.
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