At the South End of Lake Whatcom
Richard Widerkehr
At night the lake looks closer,
and somehow it’s brighter than the sky,
spread out like watery cloth.
It’s hard to think of the speed of light
or the way light’s supposed to
bend around things. From where
I stand by the still water, the stars
don’t pulsate. They get bigger and bigger,
wet as the grass at my feet.
Richard Widerkehr earned his M.A. from Columbia University and won two Hopwood first prizes for poetry at the University of Michigan. He has two book-length collections of poems: The Way Home (Plain View Press) and Her Story of Fire (Egress Studio Press), along with two chapbooks. Tarragon Books published his novel, Sedimental Journey, about a geologist in love with a fictional character. Recent work has appeared in Rattle, Floating Bridge Review, Gravel, Sweet Tree Review, and Cirque, Other poems are forthcoming in Measure, Arts & Letters, Naugatuck River Review, and Mud Season Review. He’s worked as a writing teacher and, later, as a case manager with the mentally ill. He co-edits poetry for Shark Reef Review. His new book, In The Presence Of Absence, will come from MoonPath Press in 2017.