Lauren Camp

Lauren Camp
 
What Yesterday, What Tomorrow
 
I sit beneath trebled trees in the patient day, the sky sharply demarcated:
white to blue. Nothing to notice but the slope of my back in the seat in the
shade, the chokecherry bush in rapture. Church bells shake, all ellipses.
How often is this possible—a cleaned-out time made long? Clouds merge,
become my continent. In the late afternoon, in this white wooden chair, an
anonymous portion of safety. The windows of the solarium open out.
Now, and nest. The birds at ease, the fall of ordinary air. A stem,
some toothsome leaves with holes. Some resting.
 
 
 
Lauren Camp is the author of two collections. Her third book, One Hundred Hungers, won the Dorset Prize (Tupelo Press, 2016). Her poems appear in Slice Magazine, The Seattle Review, World Literature Today, Hobart and elsewhere. She is a Black Earth Institute Fellow. www.laurencamp.com