Today's poem is by S.A. Leger

As the snow to the sun
       

On a mound of peat sits a Caspian Tern
sent to puncture the quiet
of my ocean hut. Here, a centenarian drought
peels from the trees. The tern perches

at the pinnacle of the heap, opens its needle bill,
"you are not living," it shrieks
but I take it to mean: you are not living
where nightfall can reach you.

•

The freckles of my plain arms
whisper to me, we are not homely
& my legs might agree only they are wonders

out of 1955 & would, upon my argument,
walk out of frame, don a long leather skirt—
vegan leather, hems ruinous with alfalfa,

ditch water, crawdads clinging to my toes.
I stumble through corrugations—
you were not a salty oasis,

I shout at the farm where I grew up,
& in you, I was not seawater. You fell
from the sky, hung with ropes—

moonglow over my cowboy boots—
steadied by clay stilts after rain. I plug my ears
against your dying gasp & you sell me

down the North Fork into a waterless abyss.

•

"You do not want to be" shrieks the tern
but I take it to mean: you will not give in
naked as the snow to the sun. Are you not welcome
here? Are you not the blood of this soil?

But aren't you something in that leather skirt.
I stomp at the tern & though I claw my way
toward demise, my body resists the dust.

Copyright © 2025 S.A. Leger All rights reserved
from The Manhattan Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission