Phillip Watts Brown

NIGHT RATIONS

fig. 1

With rations lingering, we cross the blue 
of a dark-scented night and cut through fields
like birds—two crows carrying 
our shapeless freight of words—
as an unseen train pines in the woods. 

fig. 2

The train cuts in through our words, 
carrying a freight of pinewood 
with a scent lingering across the field.
We see crows as darks and blues
like two bird-shaped rations of night.

fig. 3

Crossed with fielding a night 
blue as the pining of trains, 
we cut our birdlike rations in two.
Words shape darkness. See: a crow lingers
and the wood-scent carries through.

fig. 4

We ration our words like firewood 
as night lingers, with two freight-trains crowing
and a bird carrying the scent 
of cut pines into a field of blue. 
See the dark shape crossing through? 

fig. 5

A scent of pine lingers (the bird’s freight 
we carry) as our two shapes cut crow-like
across dark woods and a field
without words—trained in seeing
through the rationed blues of night.

Phillip Watts Brown received his MFA in poetry from Oregon State University. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in several journals, including The Common, Tahoma Literary Review, Grist, Camas, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Rust + Moth, and Psaltery & Lyre. He has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize and was a finalist for the 2020 Orison Anthology Award. He and his husband live in Logan, Utah where he works at an art museum and writes poems during lunch breaks.