Bringing Things Near

Bringing Things Near Geffrey Davis (bio) Keywords wind, stillness, mercy, despair, warmth, wings Something of the wind's way with trees right now, its moment to moment renaming of whatearlier I mistook as flowered stillness and not so much reaching for sky, brancheswavering into this then that airspace, hewing a fresh door from my wonderbarely rough and faithful enough for mercy's warmth to maybe flutter through, until—yes,there you come, that vast smile of yours, unchanged somehow by time and silence … Of course, I'm only weaving another surrogacy out of the wind. Some mercies never arrive.Why then, before the next breath fails to conjure, do I stay feeling just one wild word awayfrom awe with wings as slick as any despair? End Page 52 Geffrey Davis geffrey davis is the author of three books of poems, including the forthcoming One Wild Word Away (BOA Editions). His second collection, Night Angler, won the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, and his debut, Revising the Storm, won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. Davis lives in the Ozarks and teaches for the program in creative writing & translation at the University of Arkansas. Raised by the Pacific Northwest, he is also a core faculty member of The Rainier Writing Workshop and serves as poetry editor for Iron Horse Literary Review. Copyright © 2024 The Massachusetts Review, Inc.