NEW! Two poems by Doug Ramspeck

Doug Ramspeck

Two poems

MUD GHOSTS

And if there are no names 
for the land before us,

there are still the cataract 
clouds, the shapes we watch for,

the hardened ground
come winter opening its great body

into a pale reliquary.
And when it rains come spring,

we know to huddle close. 
There must be names

for the warmth of bodies, 
the emptiness of so much

stillborn land. Even children know 
that stars gathering

in a swollen sky 
must still be lonely.

THE FIRST BIRDS

Everywhere is rain. Is grass. Or night becomes a hunger 
of analgesic stars. Or day stews in its loam pot.

Is this what it means to be alive? Earth dreaming an augury 
of living ash. Then, come dim morning, something thrashes

into air. Something evolves or devolves outside
the bedroom window in gray light. Calls as primitive

as the odalisque moon, so many dark feathers.
Then clouds begin slipping nearer with fluency or away.

And hours pass in the language of earth then vessel, vessel 
then earth, though nothing knows to hold its shape for long.