A Clean, Well-Lighted Place (Online) October 2012
A Clean, Well-Lighted Place (Print) March 2013
A Clean, Well-Lighted Place (Audio) May 2013
The trick, he said, is to sit
by the lake, write about water
and sky without using words
like expanse or dome; without
comparing one to the other;
without mentioning robin’s eggs
or azure; without resorting to
a recollection of other summers
spent by some other expanse
of azure, under some other
dome of robin’s egg blue.
The trick, he said, is to see
across the lake to the other
shore; to make the other shore
anything at all but distant; keep
the clouds from becoming cotton.