Today's poem is by Adam Chiles

Elegy with the Lark Ascending
       

If there is a theme here, let it be this:
William's The Lark Ascending, my father
asleep as the heat settles over
his slippers. over the stilled acre
of his dreaming, his books initialing
the unlit passage home. Let it be
the chapel bell, its iron another detail
inside the instrument of silence.
Let it be my mother humming above
the vegetables, stove-blushed, stirring
the liver in, her spoon a tiny piston
inside this poem, turning over root
and organ. Let it be this soundtrack
of pearl churring at the glass,
the minutes loosening hand upon them.
The gardens abandoned tonight,
each one, solitary, agitated, prone.

Copyright © 2025 Adam Chiles All rights reserved
from Bluff
Measure Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission