A pond will deepen toward the center like a plate
we traced its shallow rim my mother steering
my inner tube past the rushes where I looked
for Moses we said it was a trip around the world
in China we wove through curtains of willow
that tickled our necks let's do that again
and we'd double back idle there lifting
our heads to the green rain
swallows met over us later I dreamed
of flying with them we had all the time
in the world we had the world
how could those trees be weeping?

—Jody Gladding

Rights & Access

From On the Verge: Emerging Poets and Artists, March 1994
New Cambridge Press

Copyright 1994 by Jody Gladding.
All rights reserved.

Reprinted by permission of Persea Books from On the Verge: Emerging Poets and Artists. Copyright 1994 by Jody Gladding. For further permissions information, contact Yale University Press.

  • Jody Gladding

    Jody Gladding (1955- ) is the author of four books of poetry, including Translations from Bark Beetle: Poems (Milkweed Editions, 2014).