Poetry by Alexander Etheridge
In another season, another world—
that lost moment, we ran into nights
of shudder and crucible, autumn
and oceans—our love
barely risen out of its roots.
We stepped breathlessly
into a century of summers.
We watched eternal changes
of the magic aster flower
and the magic aspen tree
in the temple of dawns, open on all sides
to white spangled light—
Just before black asteroids
crowded our sun. The temple columns
cracked under ice, and thorny vines
choked the roads.
As the trees crawled out
to drown themselves in the tide,
we began our dying
in the black burning plains,
our few seconds of love gone
into a child’s book of fables.
Alexander Etheridge has been developing his poems and translations since 1998. His poems have been featured in Wilderness House Literary Review, Cerasus Journal, The Cafe Review, The Madrigal, Abridged Magazine, Susurrus Magazine, The Journal, and others. He was the winner of the Struck Match Poetry Prize in 1999.
