Three Poems by Greg Hill

Together

And what I dream is 
a path enlightened,
a day growing sweeter,
aura of yarrow and petrichor —

gnarled limbs of kalmia,
blooms soft to touch,
memories we earn —

the trail wide 
enough for you and me — 

we savor 
the length of this wandering —

admire morning 
warmed branches, 
like antlers, from
sturdy trunks of oak
lining the route —

cradling precious
buds swaying —

to diverting refrains,
birdsongs guiding our way —

While You Read Your Poem 	
 
 This chair is astonishingly uncomfortable.
The overhead lights hum dissonantly.
A lozenge unwrapped from its crisp 
cellophane twists a moment into 
tarmac time of delayed departure.
 
My own leather bound notebook sweating
one hand or another, my thoughts flit,
unencumbered by form or physics, 
from smudge to smudge, wisp to wisp,
moving between formlessness and shape—
 
an updated to-do list,
a reaction to celebrity news, 
the faces of family I will see soon
as this conference concludes.
 
I always do this at poetry readings, 
feel so strongly the turbulence 
of one well-quipped line, 
its arrival popping in my ear drums,
I miss the connection you make
in the next stanza, again, I promise to forgive 
 
myself for losing the flight path of your poem.
When my brain hums I love you
you can’t hear it, of course. You’re piloting 
all of us in attendance, attentive or not,
to the terminal stanza of your poem, landing
 
at just the right angle on your culminating
description of lights in the city in the distance:
dendrites dancing with the thoughts 
we don’t even know we have yet.

On the New Shore

I crawled up the
beach, draggled,
sore, nothing making me
feel secure. Even when
panic passed, something inside

recalled all
I’d
lost, endured, escaped.

Looking back again across
those 
dark waters
still frightens me.

Greg Hill is a poet who appreciates experimenting with form, and is also an adjunct professor of English in West Hartford, Connecticut. His work has appeared in Otoliths, Grand Little Things, Blasted Tree, Pioneertown, and elsewhere, and he earned his MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. In the free time afforded to a father of three young children, he composes experimental music using cryptographic constraints. Twitter: @PrimeArepo. Website: https://www.gregjhill.com.