Late Summer Up North
by Rodney Nelson
how much of today would you give to be on the mirador in Manzanillo again when it was only a rotting sloven port not the warm running wind in your apartment or the merer view of high active leafage on the apple trees that now become your street not even the blown-in scent of manchineel that you imagine or having to admit that what arrived so late is soon to be leaving summer has made an own plateau in today and you would trade none of the air of it for Manzanillo’s and not move off it either Bog Light part-song of wolf in the night and waking to a road to the open riding between pine walls out and overhead the sky route ways or the way right into an open north and bog light the lake one next without limit and none to the quiet tamarack and spruce on milder green and a track in sand flark beginning or ending in morass but only light awaiting the entry of ghost caribou
_____
Rodney Nelson’s work has appeared in a variety of journals, including 63 Channels, Aireings, American Letters & Commentary, Arbutus, Archipelago, Arts Forum, Blackbird, Burning River, Dead Drunk Dublin, Georgia Review, Hamilton Stone Review, Kansas Quarterly, Language and Culture.net, Nimrod, Ottawa Arts Review, Scythe Literary Journal, The Beat, Triggerfish, Trillium Literary Journal, Whistling Shade, White Leaf Journal, Poetry and Ygdrasil. He is also the author of several books, including Swede Poems (Shearsman Books, 2007), Bytime in Yangland (Sugar Mule, 2006), Cowboy Village (Scene4, 2005), Harvestman (Retort Magazine, 2004), Villy Sadness (New Rivers Press, 1987), Home River (North Dakota Institute for Regional Studies, 1984), Red River Album (Stronghold Press, 1984), Thor’s Home (Holmganger’s Press, 1984), The Green God (Jump River Press, 1982), Boots Brevik Saga (Holmganger’s Press, 1978) and Oregon Scroll (Holmganger’s Press, 1976).
He lives in Walcott, ND.
Categories: S&R Literature, S&R Poetry
1 reply »