“Priming” by Richard Taylor

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Fading into BoliviaAfter the last gasping commentary
on the Super Bowl, after awarding
a final wedge of pizza to the dogs,
kids bedded, house secure,
pencil ground to a razory stave,

I sink into the worn armchair
by the front window
where moonlight glimmers
among the maples, each limb
traced indelibly in snow.

As stillness settles the restless neurons—
the small change of shopping lists,
the exigent trifles of morning and work—
I measure the snowy tundra
that rises toward the ridgeline,
the untracked expanse of paper
resting on my lap.

Waiting for what comes to come,
what goes to go,
I brace to front the weather—
bundled, blank, disburdened—
at last, reduced to words.

–Richard Taylor,
Fading into Bolivia
Accents Publishing

More from Fading into Bolivia and Richard Taylor:

Richard TaylorRichard Taylor is a professor of English and currently serves as Kenan Visiting Writer at Transylvania University. A former Kentucky poet laureate, he is the author of six collections of poetry, two novels, and several books of non-fiction, mostly relating to Kentucky history. A former dean and teacher in the Governor’s Scholars Program, he was selected as Distinguished Professor at Kentucky State University in 1992. He has won two creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and an Al Smith Creative Writing Award from the Kentucky Arts Council. He and his wife Lizz own Poor Richard’s Books in Frankfort, Kentucky.

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