L. Ward Abel’s work has appeared in hundreds of journals (Rattle, Versal, The Reader, Honest Ulsterman, Skylight 47, others), including two recent nominations for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and he is the author of four full collections and ten chapbooks of poetry, including his latest collection, Green Shoulders: New and Selected Poems 2003–2023 (Silver Bow, 2023). Abel lives in rural Georgia.

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The Ponds They Leave 

And they sang 
“the parting glass” again. 
I began to hurt 
like a poignance,  
separated  
from the gone 
and going. 
 
My V-shaped flocks move 
to night quarters 
only to return altered 
like the ponds 
they leave, changed 
by their own 
departing.

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Green Air of Plantings

After sleeping for a month 
I think I’ll take up 
walking 
again. 
 
It would help to listen among 
the green air of plantings 
neglected  
but not too ragged to embrace 
the rows and rows and rows 
of a
morning.

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Alone in Peopled Rooms

I. 
As the republic sleeps 
she sits, almost reclines 
cloaked like a Roman 
her necklace shines 
from firework lights 
outside above the bay. 
She turns, then I turn 
then we both turn 
in the half-dark air 
between us. 
 
A palace once stood 
here replaced a dozen  
times layered stacked 
above the old ground. 
But we dance for now 
quiet without music 
and barely breathing. 
Clothing may rustle 
or sigh, nothing more 
to hear. 
 
II. 
Countries come and go 
they say, generations 
like bridges will doze 
and lose their borders 
marked later by bones 
of lovers of structures 
all pock-marked and 
measured in days’ 
sequence, no-longer 
sleeping, enriching 
shitting and breathing-in 
the results.

It’s here I may drum 
solitary one way or  
the other in the sparkle 
of those diamonds, 
blood, motion, her cloak 
still on the chair her scent 
still part of my inhaling 
mingled with limits placed 
on our stakes marking 
the end of things. 
 
III. 
I’m told we’re always 
alone even in peopled  
rooms. And there is no 
country. Only fenced 
parcels, remote, desperate. 
Still if I squint and look 
between here
and the most-high clouds
there are small birds
like floaters, boundless 
despite any
mapping.