Haunts of the Barely Heard/ poem by Ken Holland

You can fairly hear the deep
breath of dawn, its shoulder
to the night in a deadlock
of time

And the sea shifting beneath
a crush of ice, up heaving
its mass as though
a drunken swimmer.

The sky is starless and sings
of that loss, threnody
of the spheres, carousel
of the blind

While here, the winter shore
holds close its own tongue,
dispassionate as the stone
from which it arose…

Cover me in remnants of
language, in the haunts
of the barely heard.
Hold me in the midst

of your whisper, steeped dark
in the skin of your voice,
flesh of this fragile
blue night.

/////

Ken Holland has had work widely published in such journals as Rattle, Tulane Review, Southwest Review, The Galway Review and Tar River.  He was awarded first place in the 2022 New Ohio Review poetry contest, judged by Kim Addonizio, and was a finalist in 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. He lives in the mid-Hudson Valley of New York. More by visiting his website: ww.kenhollandpoet.com