Stan Sanvel Rubin
Stan Sanvel Rubin has had poems in US journals including Agni, Georgia Review, and Poetry Northwest, as well as in China, Canada, Belgium, and Ireland. Four full-length collections include There. Here. (Lost Horse Press) and Hidden Sequel (Barrow Street Poetry Book Prize). Born in Philadelphia, he has lived on the north Olympic Peninsula of Washington for over twenty years.
Running in Grass
Remember the days
when you could run
barefoot without
counting time
through a field of tall grass
that invited you
to lie down among grasses
when you wanted to?
Want was the same as need then.
Somewhere out of sight
Mom was in a kitchen
and yet her call
uncoiled like a rope
reaching my ear
despite the distance
I imagined I’d gone
from family, home,
and everything
left behind
in the space without
imagination. Now
it’s long since
I entered this space
without meaning to.
I am running,
if it is running, not
out of joy, as a game
or a repeated miracle
to feel one with the earth,
but out of fear
that something will catch me.
