Laura Hamblin

The songs mutate
like a virus in my blood:
“I Am a Child of
God,” “Firm As the Mountains

With the heat at the end of August,
I am glad I sleep alone
And roll over on your side of the bed
Where the sheets are still cool.

These are apples picked by the pure
In heart, end of the harvest apples,
Juice apples — but apples.
And if a worm, or mold or frost

When the arduous season conies, again,
unexpectedly, air rushes through
needled trees causing a sudden
shift of time, a shift of light:

With fortune’s damned
quarreling smile,
the neighbors complain

that loneliness is like
the whole of the moon
rising in a sky so lucent,
the clouds cast shadows

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