Steven Winn: “Ruin”
RUIN
More sun than stone, what’s here is what the eye
yearns to rebuild from crumpled walls and shorn-
off spans, to fill the void with all those things
the frescoed dome and fluted pillars, cozied
apse and every leaping arch aspired to—
body stilled, mind awed, prayers lofted in
a limestone vault that sealed believers off
from everything impermanent and true—
clouds, the cobbled square and horses steaming
in the cold, the ruffled pond, the butcher’s
speckled knife, the haunch he’s just cut through,
and from this same morning breeze now roaming
through the grass and yarrow lace—the air, the light,
the breathing of what’s gone and what remains.
Steven Winn has recent and forthcoming poetry in 32 Poems, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Nimrod, Smartish Pace, and Southern Poetry Review. Others poems have appeared in Poetry Daily and Verse Daily.