by Zeke Shomler
I started today’s Wordle by guessing GHOST
and DREAM but both words were grayed out
like the sky that morning of the evacuation
from the wildfires. My dictionary tells me
the way to heal is not to dwell in the past
but to look toward the future, which is to say
in order to write anything at all
you must believe one moment
leads to the next, like a pyrophytic seed
whose allegiance to fire begets
forests, rivers, photosynthetic hymnals
baptized by the light. Do you understand
what I mean? Everything affects me, everything—
lupines choked by bird vetch, gravel walkways,
evening’s susurrus of wind
through trees. My favorite verb is to want, whose root means
empty. All day, every day, I empty
myself into the mouth of the river
whose lips close around me
like a child’s breast-latch
or a fist. I always wanted my life
to have a grounding metaphor: chrysalis, cave-light,
tomato root winding through the soil—but the study of language
is the study of loss, every day restorying
the same blank verses, the same glass jars
of plastic trash, the same dirt-smell
after rain. I cannot close my tired eyes,
cannot find another whip-cracked vessel
from which I may drink. In the end, the solution
to the puzzle was BLINK.
***
Zeke Shomler earned a Combined MA/MFA from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He now also teaches secondary math. His work has appeared in AGNI, Modern Language Studies, The Shore, and elsewhere.
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