What I Might Have Said by Richard Nester

Everything stops.
When I look at my wrist,
I am reminded of the skinny bones
of marriage. That’s how
poetry works.
Something abstract is wedded
to something concrete. When describing
some tender emotion, do it in terms
of something you couldn’t
care less about like a brick or a cloud
or some tree roots.
Or the other way around.
The bigger you want to get, the smaller
you have to start. That way
we get the idea that least things
matter most. To touch deeply,
touch sharply, in one spot,
before your sight fails you altogether.



Richard Nester is the author of 4 books of poems, the most recent Red Truck Bear (Kelsay, 2020). His poems have appeared in numerous magazines and journals, including Cape Discovery: the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center Anthology, Ploughshares, and Seneca Review and on-line in Qarrtsiluni and Inlandia.