Pine Palace

Brett Thompson

I could surely scramble
back to the top
If I was young again,
swiftly and clean
like the way the fork splits
a clutch of boiling potatoes.
These nights, I eat my dinner late,
and drink a dark beer or two
after my daughters are solid
in their dreaming
and their cries have vanished
with the steam.
Youth is an alien landscape,
a unfurrowed field
beside the looming hills
which in the darkness
rise like a bruise
and are extinguished
in the flush
of sudden light,
A rose glowed tip
of a single cigarette
the moon parting the shades
in the windows of dawn.

Brett Thompson has been writing poetry since his graduate days at the University of New Hampshire where he earned a M.A. in English Writing with a concentration in poetry. He has been published in various journals, including Plainsongs, Tilde, District Lit, The Literary Nest, and the Peregrine Journal. He teaches and lives in New Hampshire with his wife and two young daughters.