Richard Weaver

Richard Weaver resides in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor where he volunteers with the Maryland Book Bank, acts as the Archivist-at-large for a Jesuit college, and is a seasonal snowflake counter (unofficially). He is the author of The Stars Undone (Duende Press), and provided the libretto for the symphony Of Sea and Stars. His recent poems have appeared in the Southern Quarterly, Gnarled Oak, and Conjunctions. Forthcoming poems: Crack the spine, Steel Toe, Clade Song, Aberration Labyrinth, Triggerfish, Kestrel, & Gingerbread House.

The river flows without you

Because the blue eye
is also a door
cloistered in flame

Because color is always blind
and history wakes one day
in another world, admonished

Because cloud-shaped dreams
are messengers of light
and perverse engineers of dark

Because a fallen tree
is an diminished angel
fearful of rain

Because the wind’s shadow
rubs its gray muzzle
against the braying earth

Because the echo of silence
washes ashore
a bleached vertebra in disguise

Because the image floats
unanchored, rootless
in the flotsam of an eye

Because war never ends
and life, human life
is only maggot bait

Because dreams are measured
between an unknown dark
and a reluctant dawn

Because heat needs a vein
and thought needs to be spoken
or it will have no home

Because the deer’s path
lies golden in the dusk
of fallen fruit

Because the needle needs
your eyes to see
and color shifts in your presence

the heart rises, then leaps.
into white flame
as the river flows without you.

An acre of light

grows into darkness
wind begins its advance
echoing bells cry inland
for silence.
The wind begs
to be shifted, to enjoy
ripe fruit as it falls
in the comfort of age.
We fold our hands
as if in answer. A prayer
to the void. A preamble
to silence. Somewhere
across the world
a tree empties its sap
into the ground. Its roots
white with the knowledge
that death is the wind
that silences all.