By: Jim Brosnan

Silence at 1 AM

Long after
saying goodnight,
I am adrift
in sleeplessness
after a tornado
touches down
two counties east
of Hays, yet I
remember that
small Kansas town
under the glint
of a crescent moon,
the prairie cupgrass
and silver bluestem
at the roadside
rippling in a summer
night under stands
of black oak
and white ash,
your eyes
sparkling in the glow
of dashboard lights.

###

Shrugging Shadows

I invent
lengthy stories
as I crisscross
darkening plains
in the shadow
of the Rockies,
pick up speed
at dusk when
roadside antelope
seemingly vanish
in gray spaces,
yet I yearn to return
to those moments
of last summer
when we savored
a Wyoming sunset
east of Cheyenne.

###

Observing Snowfall

In the quiet hours
of a late January
evening
just forty miles
west of Omaha,
I fell the ache
of absence as
the landscape
fades to white—
the full moon
glistening
on barren fields
as my memory
lives on the edge
of uncertainty.

###

Dr. Jim Brosnan holds the rank of full professor of English at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, RI. He placed second in NEATE’s 2010 Poet of the Year competition. Jim’s publishing credits include four books of poetry and over 450 poems which have appeared most recently in the Aurorean, Mad Poet’s Review, The Leaflet, The Bridge, The Teacher As Writer, and Voices of the Poppies Anthology (UK). Since 2012 Jim has won numerous awards in the annual National Federation of Poetry Societies competition including a second-place by the Utah Poetry Society, the third place in Texas, and honorable mentions in Maine and New York. His first poetry collection, Nameless Roads, has received a silver medal in a national contest. Jim is working on his second collection, West of the Mississippi, as part of a university fellowship. He has recently been nominated for a Pushcart Award.