Doug Ramspeck

Three Omens in Fourteen Days

I used to imagine as a boy that if only I listened hard enough
to the grass, to the dead bones of winter trees, to the fish-bone

clouds, to the rote life of falling October leaves, to the space
between the heartbeats of thunder, I would hear the vaporous

secret of everything. But I thought that no one could ever bear
to hear that truth without the mind slipping loose and floating free,

in the way my mother’s mind seemed sometimes a boat
that came unmoored at the dock then drifted on its own far out

into the lake, where the anthem of little waves rocked my mother
in its primitive arms. And when wind made its sacred music

atop winter snow, I told myself it was the same voice
my mother heard out on that lake, the same voice

that understood the immutable shape of everything beneath
the surface, like ice so thick it was not a window but a wall.  

Doug Ramspeck is the author of nine poetry collections, two collections of short stories, and a novella. His most recent book, Blur, received the Tenth Gate Prize. Individual poems have appeared in journals that include The Southern Review, Kenyon Review, Slate, The Sun, and The Georgia Review. He is a three-time recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award.