Doug Bolling

Doug Bolling’s poetry has appeared in Posit, Water-Stone Review, Isthmus, Aji, Poetry Pacific, Five:2: 0ne, and Juked among others. He has received Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations and several awards and lives in the outlands of Chicago.

Weathering

Body crouches in this autumn wind
Of tides, withered grasses, pods and
Husks stark in their late beauty.

Body wrought by the two who
Loved on a distant shore, spoke
Future, dream, an abundance.

The words of me given, then slow
Undoing of what had been, a shaping
Of the one I have become.

Body wrapped about myself
Fragile, subject to winds and rains
Uncounted, unspoken.

Body of flesh and blood so little
A mirror of me, so huge above the
Dreams I carry.

I have traced their lives, two strangers
Who paused in weather to begin me
Before the vanishing.

Here where sea lashes over
Stone and dune and I am
Holding on, keeping

Wary watch on the
Coming of years,
The uncertainties
Of weather.