Why can’t we change
as quickly as an October landscape,
whose air no longer sounds with terns and jays
who have gone off to warmer climes.
It is the fleeing that paralyzes --
Lovers and friends, who have left,
keep us, for the time being, still and lost
in the harsh landscape of our bodies.
This personal eclipse --
covered shadows mark us barren
as the moon, which in all its phases,
ultimately reemerges whole.
Laurie Kuntz’s books are: That Infinite Roar, Gyroscope Press, Talking Me Off The Roof, Kelsay Books, The Moon Over My Mother’s House, Finishing Line Press, Simple Gestures, Texas Review Press, Women at the Onsen, Blue Light Press, and Somewhere in the Telling, Mellen Press. Simple Gestures, won Texas Review’s Chapbook Contest, and Women at the Onsen won Blue Light Press’s Chapbook Contest. She’s been nominated for four Pushcart Prizes and two Best of the Net Prizes. In 2024, she won a Pushcart Prize. Her work has been published in Gyroscope Review, Roanoke Review, Third Wednesday, One Art, Sheila Na Gig, Anti-Heroin Chic, and other journals. Happily retired, she lives in an endless summer state of mind.
