is like standing on a rock in a river,
a place floating in quiet
that throbs with the passage
of the natural world—crickets
through the last warmth of fall,
chorus frogs, and the hypnotic
bending of pale grasses
punctuated by an urgency, crows,
a cardinal flash, and that abiding
anticipation of time, its visitations
like a deer that approaches, considers,
disappears, or a narrator’s present
becoming past, as one reads on
into dimmer light, as day turns back
to a next beginning through night.
Kelleen Zubick’s poems have appeared in a number of journals including Agni Online, Barrow Street, Bellingham Review, december, Dogwood, the Kenyon Review, and the Mississippi Review. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from Arizona State University and has been awarded artist residencies from the Anderson Center and from the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. Kelleen lives in North Carolina and works for the national No Kid Hungry campaign.