Sean Thomas Dougherty
A Bed of Creeping Thyme
Don’t call your grown son at this late hour.
Put on a coat and go outside, recall a family
you made of snowpeople, your daughter’s
mittened hands, the bed of creeping thyme
disappearing in the sudden storm.
The snow is bandaging the world
or is it erasure? What is the answer
to this night’s interrogation?
It’s falling heavy now.
You know why there are two syllables to hours.
Ours is what is left you cannot name.
Explain can’t you, canto what you can bear,
swear
this music is what most matters,
the lawn’s staff, notes of tiny boot prints
vanishing—.
Sean Thomas Dougherty is the author or editor of 20 books including the forthcoming The Dead are Everywhere Telling Us Things (winner of the Jacar Press Poetry Prize) and the Death Prefers the Minor Keys (2023 BOA Editions). He works as a Med Tech and Caregiver for folks with traumatic brain injuries, and is the current county awarded Poet Laureate for Erie Pennsylvania.
Return to July 2022 Edition
Don’t call your grown son at this late hour.
Put on a coat and go outside, recall a family
you made of snowpeople, your daughter’s
mittened hands, the bed of creeping thyme
disappearing in the sudden storm.
The snow is bandaging the world
or is it erasure? What is the answer
to this night’s interrogation?
It’s falling heavy now.
You know why there are two syllables to hours.
Ours is what is left you cannot name.
Explain can’t you, canto what you can bear,
swear
this music is what most matters,
the lawn’s staff, notes of tiny boot prints
vanishing—.
Sean Thomas Dougherty is the author or editor of 20 books including the forthcoming The Dead are Everywhere Telling Us Things (winner of the Jacar Press Poetry Prize) and the Death Prefers the Minor Keys (2023 BOA Editions). He works as a Med Tech and Caregiver for folks with traumatic brain injuries, and is the current county awarded Poet Laureate for Erie Pennsylvania.
Return to July 2022 Edition