Rob Carney is the author of four previous books of poems, most recently 88 Maps (Lost Horse Press, 2015), which was named a finalist for the Washington State Book Award, as well as the forthcoming collection The Book of Sharks (Black Lawrence Press). In 2014 he received the Robinson Jeffers/Tor House Foundation Award for Poetry. His work has appeared in Cave Wall, Columbia Journal, and many others, and he writes a regularly featured series called “Old Roads, New Stories” for Terrain: A Journal of the Built and Natural Environments. He lives in Salt Lake City.
One morning the sun fell in love,
then changed its mind.
Life likes to go like that:
Now you’re a planet, and next,
you’re not a moon,
not an asteroid or radio wave, long gone
when the newspapers show up announcing,
“The Weather Today Calls for None.”
Who can figure the sun’s mind?
There was a poet once named Li Po.
Maybe he wrote it down somewhere:
the right words to fix the sky.