After Catastrophe by Spencer K. M. Brown

There’s a place I drive to while getting our boys to sleep.
A place they clear-cut years back but I guess forgot to make something of.

I’ve never taken you there, but I’d like to,
Last night I dreamed of it, all of us there.

The field is plush with wild golden flowers now, random when passing,
But I parked today, and they’re in even rows actually.

Nothing random or chaotic about it, except the bees and butterflies
Bouncing from here to there as instinct beckons them.

There’s always an act after catastrophe, silent,
Like the one made by whoever sowed these seeds among ravaged earth.

One after another, the golden rows in couplets among scarred clay.
One following the other, satisfying one moment, promising another on powdered wings.

And that’s what you give me, our boys, neat rows for now,
Hope for tomorrow, with everything that can fly dancing in between.

And I’ll never not blush at your golden gaze, or when you try to balance on me.
I’ll try to move in rows for you, one into the next.



Spencer K. M. Brown is an award-winning poet and novelist. He is the author of the novels Move Over Mountain and Hold Fast, and one collection of stories, Slow Fire. He lives in the foothills of North Carolina with his wife and three sons. The Salvation of Me is his first book-length collection of poems.