Writing to You During a Spring Storm

the wind throws gust after gust
of shellrock into my teeth
my letters to you like the hill wearing away
suffer interruption after interruption

even you remembered the days
—did they happen?—
when our ministers smoked peace
with the southern plainsmen
the fumes replenished the earth

who for us now will propitiate the dead?
you knew then we would regret
living honorably

interruption after interruption
the madrone cannot make up
their minds on a color
wiping the raindrops off the page
leaves sandstains

the spring is no season for writing
until a quieter time I will put away
thoughts of you and of loud spirits

wait wait until the canyon maple
abandoned these eons sing again
their chants like cracked skin

About the Author
J. R. Forman (Lecturer, Tarleton State University) is an internationally published poet and critic whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in such publications as Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Literature of the Americas, Contemporary Studies in Modernism, Ramify, Streetlight Magazine, Make It New, and Clemson University Press. He was a 2019 finalist for the Julia Darling Memorial Poetry Prize. He received a PhD in philology, linguistics, and literature at the University of Salamanca, Spain, and a PhD in literature and MA in English at the University of Dallas, along with a BA in liberal arts at St. John’s College, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Forman is an alum of the Ezra Pound Center for Literature Writing Workshop at Brunnenburg Castle, Italy. He has lived and studied extensively in Europe and Central America, while his work reflects the stories and voices of Appalachia and the Southwest.