AMANDA JERNIGAN: A Poem
Amanda Jernigan
STILLE
There’s always this interval between
when you arrive — so easily,
it seems, though from so very far away —
and when we do, exhausted, footsore,
dusty from the road, though we
come only from before, and come
to think of it it’s marvellous
that we catch up with you at all,
or that we’re granted this brief Stille,
time touching time in some out-of-the-way place.
We had to invent angels, to notice.
(first published in the Atlanta Review)
Amanda Jernigan lives
in Hamilton, Ontario, with her husband (artist John Haney) and their growing
family. She is the author of two books of poems (Groundwork and All
the Daylight Hours) and of the monograph Living in the Orchard: The
Poetry of Peter Sanger. She edited The Essential Richard Outram, and
is currently at work on a critical edition of Outram's poems. Read my conversation with Amanda Jernigan here.
STILLE
There’s always this interval between
when you arrive — so easily,
it seems, though from so very far away —
and when we do, exhausted, footsore,
dusty from the road, though we
come only from before, and come
to think of it it’s marvellous
that we catch up with you at all,
or that we’re granted this brief Stille,
time touching time in some out-of-the-way place.
We had to invent angels, to notice.
(first published in the Atlanta Review)
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| Image by Girts Gailans, courtesy of Red Edge |