M. Smith Janson
getting the last word in at dusk.
It’s not a word.
With so much talk about
the coming of the end
it’s hard to know where to begin.
I’ve lost all interest
in being smart or charming
and only want to stop
mid-path, lay down
in the grass and listen to the wind
boss the trees around.
Neither happiness or unhappiness.
Nor the beveled place in a Levis poem
where a cat lay on the counter
of a rural post office or how
its fur stirred when a hand passed
over its sleeping body
when mailing a letter. Like the ones
we used to write to each other
in what seems now like another life.
Dear you, dear me.
When we lived in orchards.
When we slept in open fields.
When on a Canadian back road
there was so little traffic
we stretched out on the asphalt
as evening came on, trying to
hold onto the day’s heat,
saying here’s a good thing,
here’s a good thing a little longer.
–
–
M. Smith Janson’s poems have appeared in Green Mountains Review, Rattle, jubilat, Lyric, Best American Poetry (2000) and numerous other literary magazines.
