"What things are steadfast?" ~ Linda Gregg
Not the grass, longer now in the sun;
nor the sun, trickling behind clouds.
Here is the wind gathering force,
and the water always rushing forward
or away. The same bend in the road,
the same dip in the underpass— but
they fill like a different size cup
every new season. I write letters
and ask for stamps with trains
or birds on them. Last month, Sheryl
took and weighed them; today, Loretta.
At the corner café, an engraved plaque
hangs over an empty armchair;
on the bridge, someone has left
votive candles and flowers. I lay
my head on night's pillow. I fall
asleep on the other side of the moon.
In some plays, an actor might turn
a coat inside out to say one
more day has passed on the road.
Poet Luisa A. Igloria (Poetry Foundation web page, author webpage ) is Co-Winner of the 2019 Crab Orchard Open Competition in Poetry for her manuscript Maps for Migrants and Ghosts, forthcoming from Southern Illinois University Press in fall 2020. She is the winner of the 2015 Resurgence Prize (UK), the world’s first major award for ecopoetry, selected by former UK poet laureate Sir Andrew Motion, Alice Oswald, and Jo Shapcott. She is the author of What is Left of Wings, I Ask (2018 Center for the Book Arts Letterpress Chapbook Prize, selected by former US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey); Bright as Mirrors Left in the Grass (Kudzu House Press eChapbook selection for Spring 2015), Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser (Utah State University Press, 2014 May Swenson Prize), Night Willow (Phoenicia Publishing, 2014), The Saints of Streets (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2013), Juan Luna’s Revolver (2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize, University of Notre Dame Press), and nine other books. She is a member of the core faculty of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Old Dominion University which she directed from 2009-2015. In 2018, she was the inaugural Glasgow Distinguished Writer in Residence at Washington and Lee University. When she isn’t writing, reading, or teaching, she cooks with her family, knits, hand-binds books, and listens to tango music.