He loved warm winter days when woodlands opened
their summer secrets to a passerby.
—Jim Wayne Miller
Remember the bridge over the Maumee?
The woods swallowed it one night. It grew dark
and darker still. And our fear fattened on what lay ahead.
Now, when the wind rustles the wild mountain grass
outside my window, I imagine days waiting for me
when I will no longer be. Only the wind
will be here, and a few snakes and mice.
Beetles and ants will go on
climbing the Mummy Range
of the leafy stems, causing
the grass to bow a little
with their weight
and effort at the top.
Everything will love everything else.
The world will go on being reverent to the world.
And it will surely not miss me—
that insignificant impression
my body bent into wind—
and will eat itself clean
without me, not even remembering I ever walked
this path or left threads of myself behind,
clawed at by cockleburs that tried to hold me.
George Kalamaras is former Poet Laureate of Indiana (2014–2016). He is the author of twenty-four collections of poetry—fifteen full-length books and nine chapbooks—as well as a critical study on language theory. He is Professor Emeritus of English at Purdue University Fort Wayne, where he taught for thirty-two years. George and his wife, writer Mary Ann Cain, have nurtured beagles in their home for nearly thirty years, first Barney, then Bootsie, and now Blaisie. George, Mary Ann, and Blaisie live in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and spend a portion of each year in Livermore, Colorado, in the mountains north of Fort Collins.