carpenter / priest / cowboy / mountain climber
my dream life at seven years old
then one night / rose an expanse of bright / shimmering water / out of which a thin / young / dead man walked
clinging to a cliff / i reached down / to touch his death-stiffened hair / on the beach / lay a washed-up skull
by then i was seventeen
next came dreams of twisting tunnels / elevators that rocked / plane crashes witnessed from within and from the ground
and lush / lyric dreams too / of a river / blue and warm / that tilted up on edge to face me / like a framed van gogh / and of running into farm fields where / in the ditches / wild fudge grew / and of my sweetheart and me / sitting under a swaying willow tree / crying with the tender conviction that if very / very / careful / we could live together for four hundred years
i try to imagine my dreams at four hundred
and cannot / but i can imagine / at four hundred / looking back / on the lush / lyric dreams / i’d tried to live in / with tender / if cliff-hanging / conviction
—
Mark Belair’s poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Alabama Literary Review, Harvard Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review. He is the author of seven collections of poems and two works of fiction: Stonehaven (Turning Point, 2020) and its sequel, Edgewood (Turning Point, 2022). He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize multiple times, as well as for a Best of the Net Award. Please visit www.markbelair.com