Up From Below

A new poem by William Logan

Photo Credit: mominsean, Courtesy of Creative Commons

Days wind-torn, corrupt with longing,
Spanish moss hung from dogwood
like a distressed wool cloak.

We’ve seen better days.
The yard refused its punishment,
pressing up new growth like some Lazarus,

half an inch at a go. The vines stood like pickets
with a little head-nod at the tip,
a come-hither glance with nascent thorns.

How unlikely landscape looked,
the anoles great gray monsters of the Mesozoic;
spindly Hong Kong towers

of unnameable weed; even St. Augustine grass,
scruffy and angry from above,
up close like spears of a squashed Calder.

Then the small hours awaiting your next word.

WILLIAM LOGAN'S latest book is Guilty Knowledge, Guilty Pleasure: The Dirty Art of Poetry (2014). His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Poetry, The New Criterion, and other magazines.