Aaron Brown: “To the Stars Through Difficulty”
TO THE STARS THROUGH DIFFICULTY
Somewhere in the fever dream
of loss your hatchback hums
down the dark highway swell
until distinguished from one shadow
is the next—a whole backdrop
of blinks, wind turbine lights
like eyes burning the night,
more lighthouse than warning
light beckoning you into the land
of the living and the lived.
The next day you will box up
another life yet again, prepare it
for the unknown beyond just an address.
But for now: these humming miles,
these whispered farewells, and
the mind’s ever-turning—
how do you learn to lose a land
you are just beginning to love?
Aaron Brown is the author of a poetry collection, Acacia Road, winner of the 2016 Gerald Cable Book Award (Silverfish Review Press, 2018) and of a memoir, Less Than What You Once Were (Unsolicited Press, 2022). He has published work in Michigan Quarterly Review, Image, World Literature Today online, Waxwing, and Transition, among others, and he is a contributing editor for Windhover. Brown grew up in Chad and now lives in Texas, where he is an assistant professor of English and directs the writing center at LeTourneau University.