To Someone I Can’t Fall with Again by Seth Copeland

You and I are like the Great Salt Plains—

flaked & gleaming, ancient & dry,

picked at for worms by cranes & plovers

just outside a town called Jet. Nothing but flyover for us now.

Out here we can’t die. Out here nothing lives,

so where does that leave us?

Selenite witch nails dig into our crust.

A dead sodium sea shears off,

& a reservoir prunes at its pulsing amoeba edge.

Almost microscopic, the plan,

another duck & hide & shrivel.

Our winds crossing saline dust

in the flat air of these Great Salt Plains,

still snow silent, ancient & dry.

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Originally from Oklahoma, Seth Copeland currently teaches and studies in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His work has appeared in Drunk Monkeys, Dream Pop, Heavy Feather Review, Kestrel, and Yes Poetry, among others. He edits petrichor. @SethTCopeland