Photo of Yellow-rumped Warbler: NPS
Heat Death
To have found loss
promised in the promise
of all fulfillment, to have
mocked at circumstance
as well as at distant
suns, to have lit upon
the hawthorn berry’s first
tinct of red and to know
yet not to have known
Cartography
The maps we drew
came under siege by
blank encroaching
white, the territory
we knew growing ever
smaller, yet rather
than send out explorers
or even one, we
huddled under what
light we could muster
and cast lots to see
to which of us it would
fall to try and fathom
the absolute oneness of
each moment in its
infinite and deplorable
succession, to which the
duty of finding out
the name of those little
birds of gray and
yellow that flitted among
the final yellow leaves
G. L. Ford was a founding member of the Ugly Duckling Presse collective and a founding editor of 6×6. His poems have appeared in The Brooklyn Review and LVNG, among others. Chapbooks of his work have been published by UDP and Cy Gist Press. His first full-length book, Sans, will be published by UDP this spring. He resides in Harlem.