From WTP Vol. VI #3

At Night-Point
By Michele Leavitt

In recent dreams, I weed the night
by touch, yanking limp grasses, tossing amputated limbs
into the slop bucket’s shame. Now, a different kind of morning: balancing
on the fallen hemlock, running my fingers on an angle
of barkridge grown thick, resistant to decay and intact
beyond death for thirty, forty, fifty years or more.
This fallen hemlock transects fifty feet or more
of forest floor, its crown a vanishing point, its intact
branches making spokes around the trunk. Some angle
up toward stars. Some impale the duff. I feed the dream I need, balancing
on the trunk, weaving between the spiking limbs
to my own vanishing point. Tonight.

Michele Leavitt’s essays have been published in The Rumpus, Guernica, Catapult, and The Sycamore Review, and her poetry in Poet Lore, North American Review, Stirring, Baltimore Review, among others. She is the author of the poetry collection Back East (Moon Pie Press 2013) and the Kindle Singles memoir Walk Away.