Poetry

Commonplace (3)


Fixing its stare on my stare, the rabbit’s stillness is countersignature
to a contract I hadn’t realized
I’d already signed.

A child-like willingness today
was, only yesterday, an embryo
in the womb of my resistance.

A wrist of stratocumulus lies slack against blue sky,
the bone of it stolen by wind
to nourish the wildflowers at my feet.

Thriving, as fog thrives in air, diffusely—this will be
my model for every pact
I make with emptiness.

Rusty Morrison is co-publisher of Omnidawn. After Urgency won Tupelo’s Dorset Prize (forthcoming 2012); the true keeps calm biding its story won Academy of American Poet’s James Laughlin Award, Northern California Book Award, Ahsahta’s Sawtooth Prize, and the DiCastagnola Award from Poetry Society of America. Whethering won the Colorado Prize for Poetry.