An Ancient Longing, by Chuck Salmons

An Ancient Longing

after The Four Seasons, Woldgate Woods, Winter, 2010, by David Hockney (England) 2010

Your instinct is to stitch together 
the seams of the world--
weld limbs and trunks of trees 
back into place, free yourself of 
phantasmagoria flooding your senses. 

You are not a guppy gliding along 
glass walls of your tank. 
Nor should you don hat and gloves 
to go gallivanting with children,
slipping and sliding on their sled.

Whose woods these are is of no consequence,
only that you surrender to their mythology
woven in snow-laden sinews 
that canopy the lane, carried in hearts
of trampers who trudge icy drifts

and pass like shadow crows crossing 
overhead. Theirs is a truth as elusive as a sun 
forever out of reach, its light sluicing branches 
and warming your cheek against the 
deepening cold of an English countryside.

​Chuck Salmons

Chuck Salmons is a poet and has served as part of the leadership for the Ohio Poetry Association for more than a decade. His poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Chiron Review, Pudding Magazine, The Fib Review, Evening Street Review, The Ekphrastic Review, and I Thought I Heard a Cardinal Sing: Ohio’s Appalachian Voices. He has published three poetry collections: Stargazer Suite (11thour Press, 2016), Patch Job (NightBallet Press, 2017), and The Grace of Gazing Inward: Poems in Response to the Art of Alice Carpenter (Dos Madres Press, 2024). Chuck is recipient of a 2018 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for poetry, and he performs with the poetry trio Concrete Wink.  www. chucksalmons.com