Fable
Richard Widerkehr
Under a sun that’s hard to tell from the moon,
a man in an overcoat and fedora waits, hands in pockets.
He spots an egg-shaped stone,
which spills yellow light
onto a dirt path near the edge
of a stubble field.
The man’s face half-hidden beneath his gray fedora—
he doesn’t believe in ghosts. He likes to stand
on doorsills, thresholds,
clasping each moment like a teacup.
He longs to rest his head on the stone.
When he picks it up, the egg
of his sorrow burns and blossoms,
a living branch, with no wish to rule other trees.
A woman touches his hand,
puts this ring on his finger and weeps.
He thinks of his father, a dying king
who said, You were two-thirds
on your mother’s side, one-third for me.
The man touches the egg in his pocket,
picks up a feather,
rises over fields, making black trees
stand still. He doesn’t know
his coat is glowing.
Richard Widerkehr’s work has appeared in Sweet Tree Review, Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily, Atlanta Review, and others. He earned his M.A. from Columbia University and won two Hopwood first prizes for poetry at the University of Michigan. His latest book is In The Presence Of Absence (MoonPath Press). His new book, At The Grace Cafe, is forthcoming from Main Street Rag. He reads poems for Shark Reef Review.