Oct 28, 2023

Timescales by Derek Graf

Timescales

Cloud-capped high-rises

collapse behind an electric

fence, plankton drift

in the depths of an urn.

At last I understand

the rhythm of fissured

glaciers. Our mattress,

love: a sheet of ice.

While you sleep

I watch the last trees

dissolve into soot.

Derek Graf's poetry collection, Green Burial, won the 2021 Elixir Press Antivenom Poetry Award for a First or Second Book of Poetry. My poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Journal, Sugar House Review, Meridian, and elsewhere. I serve as Clinical Assistant Professor of English at Yeshiva University and Associate Poetry Editor at West Trade Review.