Doug Ramspeck
White Sky
These robes of morning
make a fence of the world,
some sedge of sky as the rain stops,
something found
and then abandoned. I used to believe
that the years were made
of grass and shadows
and dense summer heat,
something stewing in its own juices,
some loam of hours
thickened with prophecy.
There was the summer my brother
and I slept some nights in hammocks
on our father’s back porch, slept
while the mosquitoes
anointed us in blood,
then were awakened mornings
by an intruder sun
and the broken vessels
of the trees behind the house.
How whisperless the sky
seemed, how emptied of its own being
as we rose in our bodies
to step into it.
Doug Ramspeck reads “White Sky”
Doug Ramspeck is the author of seven poetry collections, one collection of short stories, and a novella. One recent book, Black Flowers (2018), is published by LSU Press. Individual poems have appeared in journals such as The Southern Review, The Kenyon Review, Slate and The Georgia Review.