A Rectangular Depth
John W. Sexton

sew up the gaps
where the universe leaks
then I’ll be your love

my coat of light
just the rain
in the dark

headlamp eyes of owls …
the mice that sleep in my heart
restless in their dreams

grass:
memory, storage capacity, energy,
self-generation

a rectangular depth …
yet, the word hole
will receive him equally

sunlight …
a cat leaves the black of its coat
at the tree’s shadow

in the porch
a spider shapes
perfect silence

I exhale a hat of fog …
the moon is smeared
in its own light

oh you black sky …
more visible
than the brightest stars

grit-door opening grain
by grain … ants navigate
with larvae lantern

John W. Sexton lives in the Republic of Ireland. He was born in 1958 and is the author of four previous poetry collections, the most recent being Vortex (Doghouse, 2005) and Petit Mal (Revival Press 2009). His fifth collection, The Offspring of the Moon, is due from Salmon Poetry in 2013. In 2007 his poem “The Green Owl” won the Listowel Poetry Prize; in that same year he was awarded a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry.