The Burning Bush 2, issue six, February 2014
Lex Runciman When the World Goes Husk and Ash When the world goes husk and ash and no one I remember remembers me, let me not think of that December night labor woke us and carried us new again. And let me not recall our first child first asleep an evening in July, so late we ate slowly that day’s first food, and looked at each other tired and looked at her. Let me not think of sea birds or tides. Nor creek water surprised and falling under a summer bridge. Let me forget the shape of her hand, unlearn the sad face my father wore. Let me forget Venus at dawn, and peonies crawled with ants, and dahlias, chrysanthemums and rose. No one in mind. Not bile but mint on my tongue. The work and hum of bees.
Lex Runciman has had poems published recently in The Gettysburg Review, The Cape Rock, Cloudbank, and New Verse News. A new collection, One Hour That Morning & Other Poems, is due out from Salmon Poetry later this year. He teaches at Linfield College, in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.
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