☼

from frank: sonnets by Diane Seuss
I was tethered to this Earth by just a few simple objects,
a tattered copy of Dubliners, especially the story where
the boy observes the dead body of the former priest, “his
face was very truculent, grey and massive, with black
cavernous nostrils and circled by scanty white fur,” a horse,
a memory of a horse, not even a ring, not even a house key,
and then the book was lost, stolen in an airport, I’d been
only halfway through the story “A Little Cloud,” I recall
the last sentence I read: “Ignatius Gallaher took out a large
gold watch and looked at it,” a good sentence, strong,
without which I was lost, effervesced, sky above me tarred
with a wide, clumsy brush, below thunderheads, saddlebags
of rain sliced by tridents of lightning, the book had been
saddle-colored, or the color of the animal beneath the saddle.