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
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.