Two Poems After Steve Greer Photographs, by Lisken Van Pelt Dus

Untitled, photography by Steve Geer (USA) 2021

​Scale
  
1
The skyscrapers a collection of boulders
piled high, daring us to climb
the crevasses between them,
channels to the sky.
 
2
Like every child ever
growing up in the city, a girl
ahead of me avoids the cracks,
hops from cobble to cobble.
 
3
And you? And I? Pebbles 
strewn at the foot of the buildings, 
tossed again and again, 
scattering as we fall.
 
4
Look closer. Granules
of rock have been swept
into the edges of the day,
uncountable hues.
 
5
The sky between the boulders
is so smooth I could swear 
it is freshly sanded – coarse, 
then fine, then very fine.
 
6
I have been here forever.
Silt is settling on me. 
The city reaches down
as far as it reaches up.
 
7
In the beginning, clay.
In the end, clay.
What will the city build today?
What will it break down?

Untitled, photography by Steve Geer (USA) 2021

Ginkgo
 
Who cares about the cubicle
you just left or the screen you will stare at
when you arrive home –
 
wisdom has dropped at your feet,
there on the sidewalk,
each ginkgo leaf a fan, a flower, a fact.

Lisken Van Pelt Dus

Lisken Van Pelt Dus teaches languages, writing, and martial arts in western Massachusetts. Her poetry can be found in such journals as Conduit, Pirene’s Fountain, and Gleam, and has earned awards from The Comstock Review, Atlanta Review, and others. A chapbook, Everywhere at Once, was published by Pudding House Press in 2009, and a full-length book, What We’re Made Of, was released by Cherry Grove Collections in 2016.