Monica Berlin

THAT SENSE OF SCALE & SOME DISTANCE MAKES

again something tender we’d been trying
to let go, forget. Call it affection, anything

repeated over & again, how ritual mutes
routine, & anything resembling fondness

traces over itself again—like a name once
meant love. Like a name. Those other days

we could whisper into, saying & saying until
nothing needed saying anymore, & then all

at once until nothing at all could be said.
Maybe time’s what conceals best every

perspective, or lays it bare, or light does—
how shadow can seem to rise up any street

-scape stretched behind, turn any road
ahead pure sky, like some trick of maybe.

MONICA BERLIN (1973–2022) is the author of Elsewhere, That Small, Nostalgia for a World Where We Can Live, and, with Beth Marzoni, co-author of No Shape Bends the River So Long. The Henke Distinguished Professor of English at Knox College, she also serves as associate director of the Program in Creative Writing.