Four strong winds

swirl the gathering clouds
like vapors
from a witch’s cauldron.

The road is out, car stuck
in a forest of hemlock
bordering West Virginia.

And as the moonlight
and starlight go out
under the thickening clouds,

I question my leaving—
although we talked of it
so many times before.

Tempest tomorrow
but tonight will be
the blackest

night of a black year.
No light from the sky
can pierce the clouds

and the forest
darker than night.
I try my guitar for comfort—

but there is no comfort
in the simple notes
that hang heavy in the swollen air.

How fine and simple
we were once.
How our summer stole by.

*

Steven Deutsch is poetry editor of Centered Magazine and was the first poet in residence at the Bellefonte Art Museum, helping to create Stanza, a room dedicated to poetry. His Chapbook, Perhaps You Can, was published in 2019 by Kelsay Press. His full-length books, Persistence of Memory and Going, Going, Gone, and Slipping Away were published by Kelsay. In 2022, his full-length book, Brooklyn, was awarded the Sinclair Poetry Prize from Evening Street Press. Seven Mountains will be published this summer.