Michael T. Young
Everything We Bear
The flowers you left me,
as beautiful as they are,
strain for the light that
can no longer feed them.
“Look” you said, “a cardinal
perched on the lawn chair.
How I wish I could be
as sure as he is.”
We pay everywhere
to own what is not ours.
The moon lights our evenings
but never burns the way we do.
Our Singular Life
(Solar Eclipse, April 8, 2024)
Only two days ago
I wondered how many rays
are in the sunlight that fills
the air to the horizon.
Today, a solar eclipse
throws its shawl over the earth
with a flare as if to answer,
presenting a thin ring,
a moment of searing marriage
that weds earth to sky, threading
our stellar paths through
that needle’s eye,
one beam of light circling
that we witness and live within.
Michael T. Young’s third full-length collection, The Infinite Doctrine of Water, was longlisted for the Julie Suk Award. His previous collections are The Beautiful Moment of Being Lost and Transcriptions of Daylight. He received a Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. His chapbook, Living in the Counterpoint, received the Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award. His poetry has been featured on Verse Daily and The Writer’s Almanac. It has also appeared in numerous journals including Pinyon, Talking River Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review and Vox Populi.