after William Stafford
High in the pines, the flute of the thrush.
Water without splash: three clear notes, then a trill
of bubbles. The sound exists in a tier above my knowing.
A bead of sweat joins another and a stream slides down
my chest. I step: where is its pot belly, its mottled breast?
The humid odors of fern and decay ascend to its being.
I walk to the next bend and the notes fall again, sluicing
through sunlight, invisible drops on the pine-needle floor.
Have I a place where, when it is all over, I want to be?
Invisible, it is all invisible.
This poem first appeared in Temporary Beast (2024).
—
Joanna Solfrian is the author of the poetry collections Temporary Beast, The Second Perfect Number, The Mud Room, and Visible Heavens, which was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye for the Wick First Book Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared in The Harvard Review, Boulevard, Rattle, Margie, The Southern Review, Salamander, Pleiades, Image, and elsewhere. She is a MacDowell Fellow and a five-time Pushcart nominee. Joanna lives and works in New York City. www.joannasolfrian.com
