After Harry Humes (1935-2025)
Write its history in teeth.
Make it part fox and songbird
settled on a sumac branch,
egg-stealing snout and a flash
of tail collaring the scree.
Shovel out the anthracite
and run hands on calloused cliffs,
spires of millet. Listen for
rock clicks. And don’t be afraid
to eat a little hill dirt.
Make it hard as tortoise shell
with the sure foot of a snake,
sacs of venom that vanish
into summer grass. Let it
open like an exit wound,
but give it the pleasing shape
of a peace sign. Fill its mouth
with a water break. Call it
Kashmir or Danube or Death
but don’t split the map in two.
Carve out its bottom for kings.
Make its memory hollow
like a broken milkweed pod
or the fleshy pink space that
hides within lungs. Then, dare it
to breathe, stand firm against wind,
all of the planet’s motion.
Robert Fillman is the author of The Melting Point (Broadstone, 2025), House Bird (Terrapin, 2022), and the chapbook November Weather Spell (Main Street Rag, 2019). Individual poems have appeared in Poetry East, Salamander, Spoon River Poetry Review, Tar River Poetry, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. He is an assistant professor at Kutztown University in eastern Pennsylvania and the poetry editor at Pennsylvania English.