The aloneness
of orchards,
farm lands, and forests.
Fields freshly stripped
of
trees.

Ponds behind suburbs
and prisons
where we’d fuck around
and almost drown
in little abandoned boats.

Winds whisper
in named and unnamed places.
It sounds like
it should mean something.

All the things
to live and die here,
to turn the earth
and shape things
into form.
They fall into soil,
still, and whisper home.

All the things that toiled
in the aloneness of these places.
The named
and unnamed faces.

# # #

Peter Shaver has had poems selected for publication in Esprit, Catfish Creek, the Bridge, and an upcoming Arachne Press anthology. He won the University of Scranton’s Berrier Poetry Award and a SCCC Creative Writing Award.

Photo: Gabriel Jimenez