- Mar 21
- 2 min read
[artifice, or metaphor]
Centennial Valley, 2024
Today, the tree is a tree—an alpine pine,
if you prefer a certain precision.
Beneath it, a moose chews the shrubbery,
his rack wide, velvety, but not velvet.
His ears flap, crushing or scattering all:
the mosquitoes, the horseflies, the bees.
He twitches, lifts his head towards the needles—
his long snout and the breadth of his antlers
better understood against the green grasses.
I think of our little movements: cupping
your heel in my palm, rubbing my fingers
into your arch, your ankle; your hand on
my nape, holding me in place as you trim
my hair, my undercut made neat again.
I almost wrote buzz there because of the bees
by the moose. How tidy that might have been,
the poem’s little gesture taking you
back. Before that, cupping your foot, I thought
balm, I thought wash because a man once did
for a stranger, so why not me for my man?
In any case, I thought better of it,
and now we all miss out—me and you and
you. Today, the willow is a willow;
it doesn’t weep, though that doesn’t mean that
we can’t, or that we shouldn’t. There’s so much
to weep for and beauty as good a reason
as any. But I am not beautiful.
Do not weep for me. I am not a moose
on my belly in the shade considering
the many eyes upon me. This poem
holds a lover and a reader (hopefully).
Sometimes they are the same. Sometimes you are
you. I once thought I was. What a messy era,
days spent speaking to myself. I wouldn’t
call it a lie; there are so many truths
these days—mine and yours and yours. Tonight,
at Lower Red Rock Lake, the birds are birds.
What might we call two American Coots
finding each other, getting acquainted?
A meet-coot. Though, they are not beautiful.
No need for the scope or binoculars.
One tenant of conservation, and thus,
poetry: even the ugly deserve refuge.
For this, I am grateful. Sometimes, here,
I am not me, and this is not the face
of a beauty queen. A phrase I adore,
that aesthetic coronated into
royalty. What could possibly go wrong?
Tomorrow, my face will still be my face.
You’ll hold my head in your hands, shear away
the hair over my ears and down my neck.
I won’t feel beautiful; I won’t weep. Or,
I will. I suppose it doesn’t matter.
I suppose that’s really up to you now.
MATTY LAYNE GLASGOW is the author of deciduous qween (Red Hen Press, 2019), winner of the Benjamin Saltman Award. His poetry and essays have appeared in Copper Nickel, Ecotone, Gulf Coast, Kenyon Review, Houston Public Media, Missouri Review, Poetry Daily, Third Coast, and elsewhere. Matty is a Black Earth Institute Fellow, holds a PhD in Creative Writing and English Literature from the University of Utah, and is an Assistant Professor of English at the College of Charleston where he teaches in the MFA program and serves as the CNF editor for swamp pink.