Midnight Sun by Carlie Hoffman

When the dawn gulls call

we meet them near the wharf’s edge.

 

There is wind. The ferryman

gone, quarters scattered

 

along the dock. The sun a rusted

knob unhounding light.

 

Our landscape: blond hills stretch

into more blond hills. Our tongues

 

stunned in observance of white-tails in the field.

Everywhere, unflinching, the public

 

glare of August. Never have we been

so involved with our bodies, the risk

 

of them. A sorrow soft

and punctual as antlers in bloom.

---

Carlie Hoffman is a recipient of a 2016 92Y/Discovery Poetry Prize. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in New England Review, Bennington Review, Boston Review, Narrative, Nashville Review and elsewhere. She is from New Jersey.