JOEL FRY
TRAVELING
I’m traveling to a place
where there is no difference between slipping
and standing, where the process of living
is the process of dying, where people realize
their hallucinations are never invented,
where the soul has an advantage over
the appetite. I pine for this place when I
expect to sleep, when I endure the end
of an angry thought. A valley of oak leaves
prepares my way. Incursions
of morning light make me as simple and still
and alert as a deer. Every sound measures
my gaze, the space I cover with my bare
feet. I soften my body with dreams.
Knocks on the door go unanswered,
shivers unresisted, whispers and shouts
unnoticed where courage begins.
JOEL FRY lives in Athens, Alabama. He has had poems published in Asheville Poetry Review, Off the Coast, The Florida Review, and many other places. More of his poetry may be read by checking out the back issues of Eclectica (an online journal). He has a blog called Susurrus Waking. His first book of poems, Late Alabama, was recently published.