AT LAST THE LIGHT IN THE TREES WAVERS
and moves on like an old woman
turning away
from the mirror. Everything dims.
Now the lamp
is master. November,
and the rake face-
down in a pile of leaves
is like a kid playing dead,
the stick of his back staying
perfectly still.
And at night in our bed
the bird of me returns
to the tree of you.
All we’ve shed: leaves
and feathers on the floor.
The dark and your limbs
draw me in.
I’ll sing now
in my little house of bones.
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SUNNI BROWN WILKINSON’s poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, Sugar House Review, Ascent, Cimarron Review, The Cossack Review, Southern Indiana Review and other journals and anthologies and has been nominated for two Pushcarts and a Best of the Net. Her first full length poetry collection, A Hand on the Other Side, is a 2017 finalist for the Hudson Prize. She has an MFA from Eastern Washington University, teaches at Weber State University, and lives in Ogden, Utah with her husband and three young sons.
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Read more by Sunni Brown Wilkinson:
A poem at Ascent
A poem at Gulf Stream Magazine
A poem at Small Orange