Forty-One
When
You wake
From sleep
You wake
From death
You know
Fifty-One
Now
I become
You
Whereas
Before I was
New
Now I unfold
Into the
Enfolding
Horror
Of what comes
Next and then
Beholding
The dreadful
Faces of friends
Appearing
Deceptively
Untouchably
Turning in
The receding
Whirlpool
Eighty-Five
Another life
Was survived
Underground
In a cave
With only one
Hidden hole
To crawl out
Or into
Candle light
I dared not
Show myself
In the sun
For fear
My enemy
Would seize me
I believed
I would never
Again reside
In a house
Of wood bricks glass
Windows
Months
Blurring into
Years
Who knows
How long
The seasons
I survived
By drinking
The water
Dripping down
Through earth
And stones
Dan O’Brien has three poetry collections, published in the US (Hanging Loose Press & Measure Press) and the UK (CB Editions). He is also an award-winning and internationally-produced playwright and recent Guggenheim Fellow in Drama. Dan O’Brien: Plays One was published this year by Oberon Books in the US and the UK. Play excerpts have been published recently in Sewanee Review, New England Review, and Hopkins Review. He frequently teaches playwriting at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Find him on Twitter @danobrienwriter.
featured image by Trapac
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