Two Poems By Faron Grossman

THINGS THAT STAY

Bodies in motion will follow their rules
and bodies at rest will follow their rules.
Bodies in boxes will peacefully dream
and bodies in guest rooms will take their leave.
Spring will come late,
and winter will come early.
  
I could say
I will always be an optimist
or
you will always have a great love for strawberry milk
or even that
the sun will always rise
on the grasses of the Alps, and kites
will hang in the air when they hunt.
But one day the caravan of ships won’t come,
and we will be surprised.
Even after that, a dropped stone will plummet,
and spring will come late,
and winter will come early.
  
One day I will die
but today I am living
and there is a green book in front of me
and a box fan on the floor.
I can’t promise anything about “always”
except this:
spring will come late,
and winter will come early. 

THE ANTHROPOLOGIST

I set out on a Tuesday evening
to find the earth where she was sleeping, 
to find the slumbering form of a terra cotta woman
with a voice like footsteps on red dirt and rain on yellow tree trunks.
  
All soil,
she said to me,
lifting an igneous hand,
is reduced, in time,
to sand.
Air shivers, water chills, embers are extinguished, butterflies lose their feathers and become moths.
If you are still, you will hear them beat their wings.
  
We listened together there, to the dinosaurs crumbling outside,
reshaping the lakes and reversing the tide.
But like they, I looked away,
and before I could recognize it,
she was gone. 

Faron Grossman grew up in Michigan and is a freshman at Alma College. They are studying to be a plant ecologist – their poetry draws energy from the natural world and its components as well as their experience in it. They’ve been writing poetry for some time but have only begun recently to seek publication.