George Witte
George Witte Poems
There's something to be said
for sitting still and letting things come clear,
the way morning fog burns off the lake.
...
The gym's ball-light cast silhouettes,
blue stars that swarmed the stage, then disappeared.
In scarlet caps and snowflake wings
your class lined up, obedient, to sing.
...
Chains barricade the gravel exit ramp
our bankrupt state abandoned years ago.
Unlatched, the way descends to miles of road
invisible on maps, near overgrown,
...
Go watchfully in humid fog
emerging on the first warm day
with skeins of birds and dogs unleashed
...
Midsummer, wind across the lake
the humid morning breath of thunderheads.
Too small for awkward jutting oars
I rowed in futile circles, out of synch.
...
The silenced coalesce within
disturbances of air.
Ascending ladderways of rain
they hasten everywhere:
...
Buckled up by continental
Grind so slow and powerful it
Fused frail-boned fossils of an age
Long dead into an iron spine,
...
George Witte Biography
George Witte is the author of An Abundance of Caution (Unbound Edition Press,2023) , Does She Have a Name? (NYQ Books,2014) , Deniability (Orchises Press,2009) and The Apparitioners (Three Rail Press,2005) . His work has appeared widely in journals and in several anthologies, including The Best American Poetry. He received Poetry's Frederick Bock Prize for a group of poems, and a fellowship from the New Jersey Council for the Arts/Department of State. He lives with his family in Ridgewood, New Jersey.
The Best Poem Of George Witte
An Open Letter
There's something to be said
for sitting still and letting things come clear,
the way morning fog burns off the lake.
A friend writes: enlisted
in the Air Force, put on weight and saw the world
you missed. I'm content
to wait on what drops by
or swoops in for a closer view.
My doors are open wide, windows propped
so wind feels free
to flip through my mail, discarding
bills and funeral notices,
scattering pale
handwritten pages on the lawn for everyone
to read. A wedding invitation
went to buttress an oriole nest;
one man passing on the road nearby
pulled over, furtively stuffed a single
sheet in his back pocket, then drove along;
and the last I saw
my friend's letter held its own
with the wind, lightly at tree level
like the jet he flies far
and high away from here.
There's something to be said, and something else
to be kept quiet and cool:
the lake at dawn, before the fog burns off.
From The Apparitioners (Three Rail Press,2005)
George Witte Comments
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11/3/2026 7:05:41 PM # rel_20261026T125300Z_a7741e1
