How Quiet the Words
You lean towards me
the way a whisper
leans into intimacy
or how rain strips the sky down
to no other purpose but its own.
I know no more of you
than summer knows
the dark eclipse of its heat
when the earth
wanders away from the long light
like a drunkard
whose steps veer from the circle
of his intent.
I understand how language
itself circles
its own aspirations, the way a hawk
tightens its radius
of descent toward a motion
in a field
that runs counter to wind
and reason.
For you, my language is silent
like the mute drop of the hawk
whose cutting cry lies dormant
in the hooked stretch
of its talons, the voice of its wings
pulling hard in their ascent
their soft settling onto the cliff-edge
of isolation.
Ken Holland has had work widely published in such journals as Rattle, Atlanta Review, Southwest Review, and Tar River Poetry. He was awarded first place in the 2022 New Ohio Review poetry contest and was a finalist in the 2024 Concrete Wolf chapbook competition and the 2022 Lascaux Prize in Poetry. His book length manuscript, Summer of the Gods, was a semi-finalist in the 2022 Able Muse book competition as well as Word Work’s 2022 Washington Prize. He’s been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize and lives in the mid-Hudson Valley of New York. For additional info, visit: kenhollandpoet.com.
