for Stuart Dischell
Sunlight on ice-hardened snow.
In the woods, a wooden bridge.
Friend, when we left home,
you chose South; I chose North.
Now we’re neither young nor wise.
A bird, tricked by sun, starts to sing—
wordless, and without news.
Steven Cramer is the author of five poetry collections: Clangings (Sarabande Books, 2012), The Eye that Desires to Look Upward, The World Book, Dialogue for the Left and Right Hand, and Goodbye to the Orchard, which won the 2005 Sheila Motton Prize from the New England Poetry Club, and was named a 2005 Honor Book in Poetry by the Massachusetts Center for the Book. A fifth collection, Clangings, will be published by Sarabande Books in 2012. He directs the Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For more information, visit www.stevencramer.com. (updated 10/2013)