kevin casey \ winter 2014

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For the Sake of the Sun

The morning gave us only gray,
then frayed banks of clouds
that fell apart to rain.
And the sound of it on the pavements
and the panes draw us closer
into that silence we share.

Mist-crowned and shrouded,
the haggard forms of buildings
crowd about us, lumbering
in quiet strides from across the bay,
soaked to their pewter roots.
No clearing wind will

sweep along the river’s 
hidden seam for the sake of the sun,
and so, enclosed, we’ll wait
to be released, safe beneath
the onyx lid of night that snaps
upon the evening’s weary hinge.

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The wind considers everything --

the weight and sway of branch and wave,
the shading of each leaf it turns,
the smoothness of the stream-tossed rocks
it brushes with its roughened lips.

It scours the stubbled fields to count
each mislaid grain; it frames your face
with ash-blond hair in different ways,
and surveys every variation.

And, sifting through the hours
you’ll hear it settling its mind,
muttering through ranks of pines,
or roaring over moon-soaked roads.

But listening as it rattles panes
and sighs in empty alleyways,
the sense of what it seems to say
lies just beyond your memory
of dreams the dawn breeze swept away.

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Kevin Casey is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and received his graduate degree at the University of Connecticut. Recent works have been accepted by Grasslimb, Frostwriting, Words Dance, Turtle Island Review, decomP, and others. He currently teaches literature at a small university in Maine, where he enjoys fishing, snowshoeing and hiking. 

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