V. Penelope Pelizzon | 32 Poems Magazine

V. Penelope Pelizzon Western Wind

Thunder woke us.

Then we lay
awake in darkness,
listening to the rain.

Neither spoke.

Wind ticked
freshened leaves
against the screen.

Our silence held
no distance, but

the distance
coming months
would bring.

Neither spoke.

For absence, no solace
but presence.

Awake together
in the darkness.

A little longer in
the same bed,
the same weather.

V. Penelope Pelizzon’s books include Whose Flesh Is Flame, Whose Bone Is Time (2014), and Nostos (2000), which won the Hollis Summers Prize and the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award.

*Read David Yezzi’s response to “Western Wind” in our Contributors’ Marginalia series.