ALISON PRINE

We Talk More Now That You Are Gone

it is a conversation 
between sea and fog

blur of grey on grey
sea birds flying in and out of the haze

I can hear better
when I close my eyes

the sound of work
in the bodies of birds

as they pump 
through the current of wind

it’s a conversation
between fist and glass

each time at least partly
accidental

then bandaged, swept up
replaced

it’s a conversation
between thirst and rain

and all I say is
we tried, we tried, we tried

Teachings

you remember standing on a bridge 
over the mouth of the river

don’t say poem in the poem
or sleep in your sleeplessness

don’t say never
when you feel alone

there is a nest high in a December tree
by the river
where never begins again

when you say poem
it ruins the poem
so they teach you
but the poem 
still wants to save you

and the bridge to offer
a way across
the weather gives you
sting and shiver

but the river remember
the river 
feels nothing for you 
ever

Alison Prine’s debut collection of poems, Steel (Cider Press Review, 2016) was named a finalist for the 2017 Vermont Book Award. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Five Points, Harvard Review and Prairie Schooner among others. She lives and works in Burlington, Vermont. Visit her at alisonprine.com.