Justin Runge
Unbelieve
This is supposed to be a business-as-usual day
but the landscape emptied in a kind of rapture.
Construction is confused for gunfire. A crow
cracks a bit of branch off an ash tree and I am
still here. A crow catalyzes sky in a nice way,
blot of black on a breast pocket. A poet said
that music can’t be put to death, but musicians
have been. Meditation asks us to hear a music
in everything—usually in children and engines.
Whenever I close my eyes I start a catalogue.
This poem could end if I stopped addressing it
to all of us, and instead tilted my head toward
the sky, where the crow has faded, and uttered
the rest of my prayer, just a simple safety wish.
Unsurprise
Right back to piles plied with light rain
and wondering if it’s going to holiday.
Life is waiting to make sure it’s okay.
Just a button flapping against the bed—
nothing insidious, nothing to tear at.
The house crackles like fire the next day.
I clean up and bike in the light rain.
I roll up the string and it’s made muddy.
Pop songs lodge in this olding brain
and strategies get struck down, bulleted.
I miss the bus. I miss her doored voice.
I pull back the string and I’m muddied.
Seeing it’s been a sonnet since the start,
I end it like the clack of two rocks.
