Peter Grandbois

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Opening

Dusk spreads across    the moon battered air

And you should have been                   home hours ago

But instead stand         in an empty field

Staring into a child-                  sized sewer pipe

A trickle of water         leeching out

Turning the dirt           at your feet to mud

You know what’s on    the other side

One thing is simply      entrance to another

You call out Hello                     but your dry voice

Rasps always on the verge                    of breaking

And so you climb in                the darkness

Eating you in one                    enormous gulp

You walk toward a point          you can’t see

Leaving behind            your word-ordered-world

The mud a grave          into which you sink

Deeper and deeper                   until you ask

Who are you who walks           who are you who moves

From one life to another          to risk opening

To give in to silence                 fastening itself

To the slow drip          the pounding in your head                  

A reminder that we                  are always looking

For a way out               of pain and that what

Lies ahead is more                   than what we’ve lost

And that tree standing             alone breathing the

Slow glass of time        in the field at the end

Of this tunnel              if there is an end

Will hold us in      its fire-blackened arms       

And that all our long                flights of hours will be

Forgotten in whatever    song of water and mud        

Fallows that distant                  dream-laden ground

Peter Grandbois is the author of sixteen books, the most recent of which is Story of a Pilgrim (Tiger Bark Press, 2026). He is poetry editor at Boulevard and teaches at Denison University in Ohio. You can find him at www.petergrandbois.com.