Imaginary August
C.D. Wright

If one stood perfectly still. Even in the withering hours

of then. Hair down to here. Being alive and quiet.

One could forget oneself. Forget what one didn’t even recognize.

How mad it felt. Subliminally. One could pick out goldfinches

and mourning cloaks among the dying stalks of cosmos

and across the ditch of grey wastewater they used to irrigate

the burial ground, a young man in a late-flowering tree

taking our photograph.

C.D.Wright lives outside of Providence. She has published eleven collections of poetry, most recently Cooling Time: An American Poetry Vigil, Steal Away: Selected and New Poems, and One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana, with photographer Deborah Luster. She teaches at Brown University.