First Day in October

William Wright Click to read more...

William Wright is the author of four full-length books and four chapbooks. His full-length books are Tree Heresies (Mercer University Press, 2015), Night Field Anecdote (Louisiana Literature Press, 2011) and Bledsoe (Texas Review Press, 2011).  Series editor of The Southern Poetry Anthology (Texas Review Press), Wright has recently published work in Beloit Poetry Journal, Greensboro ReviewKenyon ReviewColorado Review, Indiana Review, AGNI and North American Review.  He is founding editor of Town Creek Poetry. Wright also edited Hard Lines: Rough South Poetry (with Daniel Cross Turner), due out from the University of South Carolina Press in 2015. Wright will serve as Writer-in-Residence at the University of Tennessee in spring of 2016.

A gray leaf enshrouds the earth.
I think of how the rain shifts eastward
into Carolina, how the clouds siphon highways

of any least shadow. Where is my father but on the moss-
ridden hill of his yard, the leaves still clinging
to summer’s last pulse? Where is my mother

but caught in her panic, the foothills
of north Georgia crashing into each other
with a slowness that belies the season’s contrition,

to destroy the green summer always commands?
Beneath us, the earth roils; smoke plumes
from sea-depths where soft, pale creatures,

forever severed of color and light, click, stumble
to find some solace in all that dark.

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