Samuel Amadon

DIVERS

I had a lot of things I had to do.
I read aloud. I walked and checked and walked
Further in my yard, farther where the wind
Goes through the big tree like a horse breaking
Free, and my desire to keep pace with it
Kept me with it as far as the corner,
Where there was no sun in the sky and no
End to the street. My work wouldn’t complete.
The horse was a fiction I made myself
An image of. I wasn’t someone else.
I was no one, what that could be. I moved
My fingers out of time. I worked for where
I found I was, somewhere in an absence,
Like an owl at noon, staring from a fence.

SAMUEL AMADON is the author of Often, Common, Some, And Free, and Listener. He directs the MFA program at the University of South Carolina, where he edits the journal Oversound with Liz Countryman.