Nathan White is a writer and musician. His work has appeared in numerous literary magazines and journals in the US, Canada, and the UK. These include Ascent, Assisi, Bellingham Review, The Bitter Oleander, California Quarterly, Lake Effect, The Los Angeles Review and Roanoke Review.His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He also offers critical instigations ("light adversity") on his blog: The Work Stands (theworkstands.com). His first book, Apparent Magnitude, is now available.
From
Sense Each Inheritance Is Named
Whispering tsk, tsk the straw swishes:
the boy watching the dust drift studies
the absence of shadow in the fields.
Before him, without a sound, dark shapes
of men in their lines breaks off from ground.
At the table, he studies faces
held above each plate. He wonders why
they must ask for a blessing. At night
they talk of harvest, frost, how they need
to rest, cold crossing the lower fields.
While they sleep he fixes the distance
between stars, imagining angels
whose work here is the movement of air
through bodies at rest: each one dreaming
of cold fields, dust waltzing before light.
Whispering tsk, tsk the straw swishes:
the boy watching the dust drift studies
the absence of shadow in the fields.
Before him, without a sound, dark shapes
of men in their lines breaks off from ground.
At the table, he studies faces
held above each plate. He wonders why
they must ask for a blessing. At night
they talk of harvest, frost, how they need
to rest, cold crossing the lower fields.
While they sleep he fixes the distance
between stars, imagining angels
whose work here is the movement of air
through bodies at rest: each one dreaming
of cold fields, dust waltzing before light.
© 2013
Nathan E. White
Nathan E. White was a Featured Poet who read his poetry at the June 2013 Second Sunday Poetry Series
Nathan E. White was a Featured Poet who read his poetry at the June 2013 Second Sunday Poetry Series