A Clean Edge by Jeremy Allan Hawkins

Foreword by Richard Siken

$10

Ships Fall 2017

To Ease Yourself

the first step in seeking forgiveness
requires there be a wilderness

how wild it must be will depend
on how long you have spent in the air

when you circle down
you will have only yourself to tame

the whole thorny stretch of it
with a pair of rubber boots & a fishing knife

acre after acre brought low as if
it shared your shame & bowed to it

a list of brambles scored across your shins
your hands a muddy map of the work

the work itself a map of the work
you always knew needed to be done

the swamp to be drained & leveled
the brush to be beaten back

until what’s left is a meadow
to which you are permitted to return

long enough to see it for what it is
the grass blowing dreamily to morning

a wilderness you have flattened to ease yourself
of its being without you & you wonder

should you have left it to waste
should you let it now grow back

before the second step of forgiveness
in which you must become a bear