Nick Courtright
Love Poem Before the End of Time
All our lives are crossing the Alps.
It’s cold. It’s cliff face and sheer drop.
And it’s more than possible
a large cat of the wilderness, or a large dog in its pack,
will prepare your pathway for you.
It’ll invite you into its mouth, where it’s warm.
You may be tempted to go.
If you find a site high up and facing out
you can build a fire and you can see for miles.
The molten core of this planet has made it so. It even
has made oceans,
this and that atom
meeting in a fit of chance.
In another five billion years
the sun, losing energy, and thus expanding, could swallow
this Earth.
Sonnet for the Airborne
There is no hurry but even hawks
harbor radiance. Their mothers fed them
graciously, that charity of mothers, every mother, regardless
of what dreams have been tangled in the wreckage.
Don’t forget this or failure will find you,
or the hawk will find you. When you sleep
it will say
I am home, this is my home.
You can go into the darkness
too many drinks later, to find that everything you do is fine.
You can ask a stranger for money. You can make a habit of it.
Who knows whose money it is, anyway,
or if we are all two birds making love in the rain—it is
all our money, and we are alive. Ghosts cannot change us.
Nick Courtright is the author of Punchline, a National Poetry Series finalist published in 2012 by Gold Wake Press, and Let There Be Light, which is forthcoming in early 2014. His work has appeared in The Southern Review, Boston Review, and Kenyon Review Online, among numerous others, and a chapbook, Elegy for the Builder’s Wife, is available from Blue Hour Press. In Austin, he teaches and lives with his wife, Michelle, and son, William. Feel free to find him at nickcourtright.com
Return to November 2013 Edition
All our lives are crossing the Alps.
It’s cold. It’s cliff face and sheer drop.
And it’s more than possible
a large cat of the wilderness, or a large dog in its pack,
will prepare your pathway for you.
It’ll invite you into its mouth, where it’s warm.
You may be tempted to go.
If you find a site high up and facing out
you can build a fire and you can see for miles.
The molten core of this planet has made it so. It even
has made oceans,
this and that atom
meeting in a fit of chance.
In another five billion years
the sun, losing energy, and thus expanding, could swallow
this Earth.
Sonnet for the Airborne
There is no hurry but even hawks
harbor radiance. Their mothers fed them
graciously, that charity of mothers, every mother, regardless
of what dreams have been tangled in the wreckage.
Don’t forget this or failure will find you,
or the hawk will find you. When you sleep
it will say
I am home, this is my home.
You can go into the darkness
too many drinks later, to find that everything you do is fine.
You can ask a stranger for money. You can make a habit of it.
Who knows whose money it is, anyway,
or if we are all two birds making love in the rain—it is
all our money, and we are alive. Ghosts cannot change us.
Nick Courtright is the author of Punchline, a National Poetry Series finalist published in 2012 by Gold Wake Press, and Let There Be Light, which is forthcoming in early 2014. His work has appeared in The Southern Review, Boston Review, and Kenyon Review Online, among numerous others, and a chapbook, Elegy for the Builder’s Wife, is available from Blue Hour Press. In Austin, he teaches and lives with his wife, Michelle, and son, William. Feel free to find him at nickcourtright.com
Return to November 2013 Edition