Vox Populi
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Michael T. Young: Two Poems
Dispersing Dusk
At the horizon behind us, shadows
come together to hold hands,
imitating us, before night takes over
completely covering us in its tight
folds and creases, like the rumpled sheets
where we frolic in our unities of flesh
and spirit. A last light dusts the air,
and in the windows those shadows
tuck into each other, the way we, now
in the dark, are aware of touch
and being touched in a nest of shades
that cannot follow us into the next day,
but will have witnessed how
the fine fabric if its light was woven
on this most beautiful of looms.
~~
Leaves
They make me think of hands, open
and ready to hold something, and as
they hold it, transform it. That’s why
we never see that ball of light cradled
in their green palms. But it’s there,
like a magic igniting the carbons into
all the sweetness a life can hope for,
all the energy it can bear. Like our own hands,
lifting everything they touch into transfiguration.
Even the stone found on a walk in the woods,
nested on the ground for who knows how long,
when I pick it up, changes into more than stone,
remade into the shape of a meaning neither it
nor I had known till then. I show it to you,
and you understand. Then I put it in my pocket,
so I can offer again to you my hand, becoming
more together as we go than we can guess.
Copyright 2024 Michael T. Young
Michael T. Young’s third full-length collection, The Infinite Doctrine of Water, was published by Terrapin Books. He lives with his wife and children in Jersey City, New Jersey.
Vox Populi 
Lovely poems. Hopeful poems.
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Yes. Thanks Donna.
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Thank you, Donna. I’m very grateful for your appreciation as a wonderful poet too.
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Lovely poems❤️
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Yes, they are. Thank you.
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Thank you very much, Lisa. So glad you like them.
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These poems make me feel gentle. I can’t quite explain what I mean, even though I am a poet too. Yikes. Image following image, tenderness following tenderness.
“and being touched in a nest of shades
that cannot follow us into the next day,·
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Thank you, Rosemary. What more can a poet wish for than that their poems reach that wordless place in their reader? Thank you.
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There’s a seamless, deeply and quietly breathing movement in these poems. And the second stanza in the second poem is pure delight.
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Thanks, Laure-Anne. I love these two poems.
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Thank you so very much, Laure-Anne. I’m a great admirer of your poetry and am delighted you like these poems.
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Both of these poems move me with their fresh way of seeing and the way they both seem to blossom out of tenderness and wonder.
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Well-said, Rosemerry!
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Thank you for this astute appreciation, Rosemerry.
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