Sad, Strange, and Startling                                                                —George Eklund


It’s just a bit sad knowing
I’ll never make it to Singapore or Nepal;
To know I’ll miss Peking,
That my mother will never sleep
In our new white house in the woods.

It’s a bit strange to think of my dark organs
Enslaved within me.
Strange having children
Scattered to far places,
Not knowing what they are thinking.

It’s startling to imagine the wings
Of all the bats in the world,
Beating above all frontiers.
Maybe they imagine they are angels.

Maybe they are angels,
Fearsome, hairy, and without a god,
And only a sad, strange and startled brain
To hold them
And keep them real.

George Eklund

George Eklund is Professor Emeritus at Morehead State University. His poems and translations have appeared in The American Poetry Review, the North American Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Crazyhorse, The Iowa Review, The New Ohio Review, New York Quarterly, The Massachusetts Review, and Conduit, among others. His full length collections include Each Breath I Cannot Hold (Wind Publications, 2011) and The Island Blade (ABZ Press, 2011). Finishing Line Press published his chapbook, Wanting To Be An Element, in 2012. Eklund’s bilingual collection of poems, In the Arms of the Fog (En los brazos de la niebla), is due out from Ediciones Simiente of Morelos, Mexico. His new chapbook, Altar, is in production at Finishing Line Press and will appear in early 2019. Eklund is an Al Smith Fellow in Poetry from the Kentucky Arts Council.

ISSN 2472-338X
© 2018