Back to Issue 5

Will Walker

The Clearing

 
A full moon
the scent of lilac

trees aligned
                        in pilgrimage
around a new-mown
                                    meadow

The evergreen night

I wake here
                        in a dream
wordless
                        observant

as the lone deer
that step by step
deliberate
                        and care-
ful     emerges
at the meadow’s edge

to listen
                        for the pilgrim
              silence
of the evergreens

and my heart
gone wild
                        with moonlight

Will Walker's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Alabama Literary Review, Bark, Crack the Spine, Forge, Passager, Pennsylvania English, Rougarou, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Slow Trains, Studio One, and Westview. His chapbook, Carrying Water, was published by Pudding House Press, and his full-length collection, Wednesday After Lunch, is a Blue Light Press Book Award Winner (2008). 

He received his bachelor’s degree in English history and literature from Harvard University. Over the last decade, he has attended numerous writing workshops with Marie Howe, Thea Sullivan, Gail Mazur, Robert Pinsky, Allen Shapiro, and Mark Doty. He was also an editor of the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal. 

When not putting pen to paper, he enjoys placing bow on string and playing the cello. He and his wife spend their summers in Provincetown, Massachusetts. 

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