Issue > Poetry

Richard Jackson

Richard Jackson is the author of eleven books of poems, most recently Out of Place (Ashland, 2014), two books of poems, two anthologies and 2 critical books. His own poems have been translated into a dozen languages. He has Guggenheim, NEA, NEH, Witter-Bynner and Fulbright Fellowships, Slovene Order of Freedom Award, 5 Pushcart Prizes, and he teaches at the Iowa, Prague and Yale Summer programs.

Soundings

What we know deeply we know for such
a short time before it appears again, distant and foreign.
Where do our words go once they are spoken?
The whale sheaths itself and leaves behind a footprint
of oil. The sea gathers the setting light of the sky.
At some point, the sea becomes the sky.
This is what Jonah had to learn, that it is
all loneliness, all forgiveness, all gathering
from the puzzling depths he carried within him.
Above, a gull dives into a cloud. An invisible
plane leaves a vapor trail the wind bends. There is
a kind of truth we only see when we close our eyes.