3 Poems by Justin Runge

In the Orchard

31

wild fecund land and her
no longer the conspicuous

life even blue arrives
and I to this withholding

spring until it is instinct
trees bare but flourishing

nonetheless and finally
sun how a shadow shows

warmth and the source of it
among meadow she is

overdressed obelisk
with darkness a sextant

the surge of shelter belt
tidal toward her or herd

I imagine her sway
in a way it would mean

immovable her creak
calming like a house’s

32

as if synapses made mess-
ianic sense she clarifies

into icon miraculous
a cameo fallen to grass

he could see the surrounds
as so violent as a kill’s fur

fully formed right eye
recipient of sun her hair

parted ionic the dark
along the left it is his

work’s contusion not hers
his name located where

one pins a brooch above
the heart not hers

without this delicate face
there’d be no claiming

such scrawl no name near
the collar oh a collar

33

offered or just held out
an apple like a sleeve

pulled through a coat’s
for exile there must

be a period of paradise
assumed unending

or more tragic not
assumed to be paradise

he homes her in the ugly
trees tells her to hold

her breath among spring
scratching out of its seeds

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Justin Runge is the author of Plainsight (New Michigan Press, 2012) and Hum Decode (Greying Ghost Press, 2014). His criticism has been featured by Black Warrior Review and Pleiades, and his poetry has been published in Cincinnati Review, Poetry Northwest, Sycamore Review, and other journals.