He Looks Up from His Scratches
He looks up from his scratches
sees the Sun
knows it doesn’t matter
knows it’s removed from an earth
he hasn’t cracked either,
knows it’s a sign
for something
he doesn’t see
in
a symbolic order
scratches away
Slip of Sediment
slip of sediment
push
a landsnail past
a migrating Lime tree
—what
that
trailsunder
a shuffle of heavens feet—
runs runs runs
Joel Bettridge is the author of four books of poetry, Ligatures (Dos Madres 2019), The Public Life of Chemistry (The Cultural Society 2018), Presocratic Blues (Chax 2009), and That Abrupt Here (The Cultural Society 2007), as well two critical studies, Avant-Garde Pieties: Aesthetics, Race, and the Renewal of Innovative Poetics (Routledge 2018) and Reading as Belief: Language Writing, Poetics, Faith (Palgrave 2009). He co-edited, with Eric Selinger, Ronald Johnson: Life and Works (The National Poetry Foundation 2008). Currently he is Professor of English at Portland State University.