Sometimes there’s no freedom to love the world—
its slants of light,
its glancingness
requiring quick
open arms.
The sorrows of the body
hood your eyes.
Time places its heavy
stones steadily around
you—building, building—
until there is only
a small spot left
for your body
to curl into itself,
its own prisoner
in its cold hovel
where it dreams
of galloping through the dark
like a hero in a ballad,
drinking in the flash
and glint of dawn.
*
Judy Kronenfeld’s fifth full-length book of poetry, and seventh collection, Groaning and Singing (FutureCycle, 2022) came out in 2022. Previous books include Bird Flying through the Banquet (FutureCycle, 2017) and Shimmer (WordTech, 2012). Her poems have appeared in four dozen anthologies and in such journals as Cider Press Review, Gyroscope Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, New Ohio Review, Rattle, Valparaiso Poetry Review and Verdad. Her memoir-in-essays, Apartness, is forthcoming from Inlandia Books in 2024/2025.
I love the boundless sensuality of our surroundings countered by limits
of mortality, the hovel, so to speak,
of our own skin.