George Witte Poems

Buckled up by continental
Grind so slow and powerful it
Fused frail-boned fossils of an age
Long dead into an iron spine,
...

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:
...

No photograph records
that day's unmaking roar.

Things ripped from skins,
...