Kevin Stoy

SPRING POEM.

     after Dan Beachy-Quick

This April evening's near
end delays in widening shingles of light
an unleashed Golden Retriever tears
through, the retreating lake
in sight. Even though my thought lies
couched into this yellow pillow
against the oak tree's bark, I'm not
promising speech for once
for the sake of sound. I see the shade
this tree's shadow stays,
everything darkening around it.
What I heard last night at a poet's reading
of his Chicago life before the fire
alarm kicked in convinced me to
pocket pieces of poems to offer
others later. If the setting
of my giving should limit
the resonance those small phrases
contain, I hope the narrow space
between our exchange will
not, the grass easing back
into place in the field disturbed
by a boy's feet, the few prints he left growing
shallower toward the spot where the kite's string
finally lifted him off the ground.

Kevin Stoy currently resides in Fairfax, Virginia, where he's in his second year of work in the MFA program at George Mason University. His poems have been published in the SNReview and are forthcoming in Triplopia and Evening of Odds.