Inside this oak

Inside this oak flooring a single nail
instructs it where to creak
the way branches will track the sun

find lakes then geese then those leaves
covered with smoke that comes from wood
knows all about hammers and claws

made from the silence that follows
and though there is no rain
you still place a small stone on the sill

sure the window will let out the light
where you open your hand
no longer holding the boards together.











Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Forge, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His most recent collection is The Rosenblum Poems published by Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library, 2020. For more information including free e-books and his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com. To view one of his interviews please follow this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSK774rtfx8see

See more of his work in 8.2 and 8.2 and 7.1 and 6.2 and 2.3 and 2.3 and in the 2019 Pocket Poems Anthology