SHARES
(Har­lan Coun­ty, USA)

In the long descent,/ darkness/ the one true com­pass. The world is not one; there are worlds with­in worlds/ what we know of the world of light is less than the weight of a soul slip­ping from an earth-pressed body. We have lost many a word/ lost many a word/ & for them they go/ down/ rock is sky overhead/ in the dark­ness a ray of light/ in the dark­ness there’s clarity/ you can see/ the chil­dren of children/ “the immense pos­si­bil­i­ties of breath.”/ In the darkness/ you can feel the lamen­ta­tion in the/ air/ can see the gift of blood/ the remote­ness of heaven./ And of the market/ its shares,/ the world is silent. The words the words/ in the darkness/ every­thing turns on the words:/ “my people”

JON THOMPSON teach­es twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry lit­er­a­ture at North Car­oli­na State, where he edits Free Verse: A Jour­nal of Con­tem­po­rary Poet­ry & Poet­ics and the sin­gle-author poet­ry series, Free Verse Edi­tions. His first col­lec­tion was The Book of the Float­ing World (2007). In 2009, he pub­lished a book of lyri­cal essays, After Par­adise: Essays on the Fate of Amer­i­can Writ­ing. “Shares” is from a man­u­script, Land­scape with Light, which reflects upon land­scapes in icon­ic Amer­i­can films. More on him at: www.jon-thompson.net