William Virgil Davis

A BOWL OF BLUEBERRIES

Then the time came for cats
climbing trees. All afternoon
one could watch the ocean
eating the sand. The horses
left the barn doors open
on their way to water. You
have been asleep for hours, 
a book turned over on your
chest. The woman died
six months before she died.
The snow drifted almost
as high as the upper window
ledges. This bread does not
make good toast. Once, 
when he was four or five, 
he thought he was lost
forever, but he was found
by a neighbor, who turned
him in. The berries floated
freely in the icy-clear water,
their stem-ends up.

WILLIAM VIRGIL DAVIS is the author of, most recently, Dismantlements of Silence: Poems Selected and New. His earlier books are The Bones Poems; Landscape and Journey (New Criterion Poetry Prize and Helen C. Smith Memorial Award for Poetry); Winter Light; The Dark Hours (Calliope Press Chapbook Prize); and One Way to Reconstruct the Scene (Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize). His poems have appeared in most of the major periodicals, here and abroad.