Lex Runciman: “Come morning,”
COME MORNING,
objects will lose their usual
regard, but for yet a little while,
they carry fresh handprints, and
rest where they were set down.
Bad news has not come to them yet:
so the red plastic magnifying glass
presumes its crosswords, the sharpener
its pencil. Four etched glasses recall
alcohol and laughter. Soon
they will waver, and many disappear,
though some will be kept for
use, or as talismans, as one keeps
stones until their origins are forgot—
these two, for instance, lobed, mica-flecked
and glinty, fished in late March from
the first chill inch of Walden Pond,
as wet snow fell on granite plinths
sunk deep in ground
to mark where a cabin was.
Lex Runciman’s most recent book, Unlooked For, is just out from Salmon Poetry, Ireland. Work in that collection appeared in a number of magazines and journals, including Gettysburg Review, The Keats-Shelley Review, Poetry East, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Hotel Amerika, and Coal Hill Review. New work has appeared in The Madrona Project: Art in a Public Voice and Cascadia Field Guide.