Geoff Collins
Phone Call, 3 a.m.
If you’ve ever followed a darkened path
curving narrow through some woods
perhaps you’ve also dreamed an arrow
released from a bow, how it arcs across
the sky, reaching, reaching, as if endless.
In this dream, other trails lead away
from the looming trees into wheatfields
with thrushes winging, but you keep
creeping back into undergrowth, as if moss
and shadows could solve everything.
—
The motorbike, as it flew through that warm
metallic night, didn’t know where it went
or that the road it was following would
carry it to an edge where the curve came
too quickly and the arrow returned to earth.
Even those witnesses in the final miles
failed to grasp what they saw—the silent stones
the gnarled blackhaw, the whispering grass.
Friend, what makes you think you could have
foreseen the deep anguish of that night?
About the Author
Geoff Collins writes in the early mornings and late evenings, because most days, that’s all that’s left. His fiction and poetry have recently appeared in Blue Earth Review, Whitefish Review, Interim, Stone Highway, Ponder Review, Red Flag, Bookends Review, and others.