Rarely do we tear off a wing
from our past bodies to feel alive
with each other, but it happens
enough that we need
some real wolves in the music
we listen to when the children
are sleeping. I sing to howl
without the substances
of our first life together. Emily,
she likes to close her eyes
& stand alone in the water
of her love for me. It’s a new
distance. We are dancing bears
that cannot understand
how we found our hind legs.
We are so many animals
that I do not understand
how these songs keep finding us.
Darren C. Demaree is the author of eleven poetry collections, most recently “Emily As Sometimes the Forest Wants the Fire”, (June 2019, Harpoon Books). He is the recipient of a 2018 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Louis Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and the Nancy Dew Taylor Award from Emrys Journal. He is the Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology and Ovenbird Poetry. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.
