poetry by william erickson

Grass Spear

People just don't see it coming,
the whole breathing
yourself to the end thing.
But then there it is

like the tip
of an archway.

What's through is through
and what's left is the arrow.

You pick it up by the feathers.
You think of the sharp dark
of a beak going closed,

the seeds inside,

how any day
now you
could grow from them.

Whose Deaths There Are

Deep in the grey ocean,
a death.

Giving off bubbles
like frantic sparrows,
a death.

Blooming at the surface,
a wave, a death.

Port side, your tiny boat
a leaf on the skin,
you sink your arm beneath
the water and something
takes it from you,
carries it into a
brand new blackness.
For the first time
you touch your death,
its foam in your palm,
the truth of its
breaching your gums.

Death always starts
at the beginning.
Follows you like
a name that no
one said until
suddenly there is
no one else you
could even be.

William Erickson is a poet and memoirist from Vancouver, Washington. His poetry appears or is forthcoming in West Branch, Heavy Feather, GASHER, The Adirondack Review, and many other pubs. He is the author of a chapbook, Monotonies of the Wildlife (FLP, 2022).