Joel Fry

Daylight

The sun contracts to a spot on the wall.
I listen. Light branches, foreshadowing hope.
Everything around me stills to seconds.
What use is time? Calm summers pass. What makes
for hours makes for rain. Shadows encourage
thoughts about where our people come
from, their skin tanned from field work.
I want out of what is coming, out of the darkness
meant for one where living is eyeless and
invertebrate. An old man whittles a stick
to his end.

Joel Fry lives in Athens, Alabama. He has had poems published in The Florida Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Asheville Poetry Review, Off the Coast, and elsewhere. His first book of poetry is Late Alabama (Outskirts, 2020).