Jeff Hardin

THE WORD THAT MEANS HOW WE WANDER OUR QUESTIONS 

Before dawn I stand on a border, awaiting
my turn to cross over. I hear a word spoken,
am caught up and sifted like dust on the wind.

I have carried this body for too long already.
My voice, like moss, lies deeper in woods. I accept
what falls, feather or twig, brightness or shade.

These hints of an afterlife I add to the others,
believing a story whose end I can’t know.
Not everything that is lies near to the touch.

Let us wander our questions as the guests that 
we are. May the answers receive us as snow
does the hare after hawk wings have lifted away.

There’s a word for the word that lingers on wordless
no matter how often we assemble these vowels.
There’s an amen that mends even acceptance.

Jeff Hardin is the author of six collections of poetry: Fall Sanctuary (Nicholas Roerich Prize); Notes for a Praise Book (Jacar Press Book Award); Restoring the Narrative(Donald Justice Prize); Small Revolution; No Other Kind of World (X. J. Kennedy Prize), and A Clearing Space in the Middle of Being. The New Republic, The Hudson Review, The Southern Review, Southwest Review, North American Review, The Gettysburg Review, Poetry Northwest, Hotel Amerika, and Southern Poetry Review have published his poems. He teaches at Columbia State Community College in Columbia, TN.