A poem by Robin Turner
Not yet crossed out, crossed over,
I am here. Still inside this earthly hum,
this solace brief as breath. O
Time, you sweet trickster. You
fog machine. You brute!
Sit with me now.
Do your unstoppable work.
Evanesce in your way
through this blue rush of days.
Violin me. Evensong me. Dress me
in dusk, birds lifting into night.
Dream me through.
Robin Turner is the author of Elegy with Clouds & (forthcoming in 2025) and bindweed & crow poison (Porkbelly Press). Her poems, prose poems, and flash fiction appear in DMQ Review, Rattle, Rust + Moth, The Texas Observer, Ethel, Literary Mama, and in many other journals, anthologies, and community poetry projects. She lives in Dallas, Texas.
Image bird at dusk by Roi Dimor
From someone acutely aware of time passing, this evokes both a feeling of sadness at the brute of time as well as an acceptance of that passing. The image of dreaming through like birds at dusk, beautiful.