There\u2019s something to be said
\nfor sitting still and letting things come clear,
\nthe way morning fog burns off the lake.<\/p>\n
A friend writes: enlisted
\nin the Air Force, put on weight and saw the world
\nyou missed.\u00a0 I\u2019m content
\nto wait on what drops by
\nor swoops in for a closer view.
\nMy doors are open wide, windows propped
\nso wind feels free
\nto flip through my mail, discarding
\nbills and funeral notices,
\nscattering pale
\nhandwritten pages on the lawn for everyone
\nto read.\u00a0 A wedding invitation
\nwent to buttress an oriole nest;
\none man passing on the road nearby
\npulled over, furtively stuffed a single
\nsheet in his back pocket, then drove along;
\nand the last I saw
\nmy friend\u2019s letter held its own
\nwith the wind, lightly at tree level
\nlike the jet he flies far
\nand high away from here.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s something to be said, and something else
\nto be kept quiet and cool:
\nthe lake at dawn, before the fog burns off.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
From The Apparitioners<\/i> by George Witte (Three Rail Press, 2005; now distributed by Orchises Press). \u00a0 \u00a0George Witte is the author of two collections, Deniability<\/i> and The<\/i> Apparitioners, <\/i>both in print with Orchises Press.\u00a0 His poems have been published in The Atlantic, Kenyon Review, The New York Times, Ploughshares, Southwest Review, Yale Review, and elsewhere, and reprinted in the Best American Poets 2007, Vocabula 2, Old Flame, <\/i>and Rabbit Ears <\/i>anthologies. He received the Frederick Bock Prize for a group of poems from Poetry<\/i> magazine and a fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.\u00a0 For twenty eight years he has worked at St. Martin\u2019s Press, where he is editor in chief.\u00a0 A native of New Jersey, he grew up in Madison and has lived in North Bergen, Hoboken, Glen Rock, and now with his wife and their two daughters in… \u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>His third collection, Does She Have a Name?, will be published in May 2014 by NYQ\u00a0Books.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There\u2019s something to be said for sitting still and letting things come clear, the way morning fog burns off the lake. A friend writes: enlisted in the Air Force, put on weight and saw the world you missed.\u00a0 I\u2019m content to wait on what drops by or swoops in for a closer view. My doors [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":468,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[24],"class_list":["post-340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","tag-george-witte"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=340"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1549,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340\/revisions\/1549"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}