Stillborn Calf
by John Sibley Williams
John Sibley Williams

Having received an MA in Writing, John has recently returned to the Boston area, where he gives weekly public readings, and he is compiling manuscripts composed from the last two years of traveling and living abroad. Some of his over thirty previous or upcoming publications include: The Evansville Review, Flint Hills Review, Cadillac Cicatrix, Juked, The Journal, Barnwood International Poetry, Phantasmagoria, The Alembic, Southern Ocean Review, Poetic Diversity, Language and Culture, Raving Dove, Ghoti, and Red Hawk Review.

There was a moment
human hands taught it fiery touch.
A moment of light.

With eyes like sea floor
glued in a milky blue haze,
up, staring up at us,
we might from our captive lives
consider the expression
boundless sky, freedom,
unhinged and carried down into us
in all its inevitable kicking
scratching weeping-
the birthing pains like a fear
of pure light
from the interconnectedness
of familiar darkness-

then like a rusted gate
swinging shut,
its opaque tongue rolling over and over
the same trembling lip,
perhaps tasting a nectar,
a hemlock,
one ecstatic chance of existence
drowned in the moon vineyards
like a temporary pause in love
consummated within the grinding
of iceberg and a light becoming itself
seen in a moment of beautiful fire
that rises through the blue sea haze
into a cobalt, teal, a sun
rising within its infant mew,
growing stronger into a shudder,
a song,
then a scythe for the Autumn harvest.

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