Fallen

                                          after “Bellow” by Ada Limón

Listen: the groundwater emptying its sponge
inside, down the basement’s stone wall,
claw hammers tearing at next door’s black mold,
the shrinking conference of bees at buds,
the repeated flash-mobs of knotweed;
listen, are you able, to the August crickets
beneath a stalled hurricane’s sopping skirt,
listen, so you have some other occupation
than to stand in the hallway, unspeaking
and not present; let all these – trash truck’s
huff and sigh, preschoolers in a chain – let them
keep your face forward, up from your hands,
because, it seems, that’s where you left it

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David P. Miller’s collection, Bend in the Stair, was published by Lily Poetry Review Books in 2021. Sprawled Asleep was published by Nixes Mate Books in 2019. His poems have received Best of the Net and Pushcart nominations, and have appeared in Meat for Tea, Lily Poetry Review, Reed Magazine, About Place Journal, Solstice, Salamander, Tar River Poetry, SurVision, Second Coming, and Nixes Mate Review, among other journals. His poems “Interview” and “And You” were included in an issue of Magma (UK) focused on teaching poetry to secondary school students. He is a member of Boston’s Jamaica Pond Poets.