Stone in Focus

The strangeness finds me in the night.
Well, it seems to find all of us, I suppose.
Often, I feel like a capsized boat taken by
the winds and blown far, far downstream.
What's new with you? Where should I begin?
There is sun in the mornings sometimes,
but then it slips away by the early afternoon.
I don't always find myself accustomed to
or inspired to write something down here.
I don't always find myself making love.
I find that when I drink, I share too much.
It's a sign of my love for the world, maybe.
My friend says, “If only I had an electric heart”
and I think that I might know what he means.
The bridge fell down and they put it back up.
I don’t always understand what I want or need.
These days I find I’m grateful when I can forget.
I turn the corner and I encounter a sinister, little
city of industry, all lit up like science fiction.
You could tell just by looking at it that it was
doing something harmful to the place it inhabited.
I felt there was a beauty in that destruction. I did feel
a terror in witnessing it. But there was also a beauty
in it. I get the terror. I do not understand the beauty.

back to issue

Scott Silsbe was born in Detroit. He now lives in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania. His poems have been collected in four books: Unattended Fire, The River Underneath the City, Muskrat Friday Dinner, and Meet Me Where We Survive. He is also an assistant editor at Low Ghost Press.