Equinox

 
for Didi & Major
 
 
We live in the pursuit of halcyon,
an elation with wings that will open us
& complement our earthly nakedness.
How we aspire for a blessing, the one
we don’t deserve, even on our best day,
the one who will hold us in the snow
in green mountains & in Paris taxis,
laughing & sharing cigarettes & Serifos.
We live for a patient ear, for the keeper
of blue secrets & our whole, long lives.
We look up believing—how we live
for song-wide smiles to reunite Pangaea,
as if never a sea between, when both
the day & night are equal & luminous.
 
 
 

Tanya Grae teaches at Florida State University while pursuing her doctorate. In 2016, she won the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival Poetry Prize, selected by Yusef Komunyakaa, and her manuscript was a finalist for the 2016 Four Way Books Intro Prize. She is the author of the chapbook Little Wekiva River (Five Oaks Press, 2017), and her poems have recently appeared in AGNI, New Ohio Review, Fjords, New South, The Los Angeles Review, Barrow Street, Post Road, and elsewhere. Find out more at: tanyagrae.com