Christopher Nelson
Ithaka
It took[1] seventeen-plus years
to accept your invitation[2]
I shouldn’t have been[3]
surprised to learn
that the train doesn’t stop there anymore[4]
but, remarkably, an ancient white
cat stared at me as I
passed[5] and I thought of
who I used to be and what
we leave behind to become
what we are no longer[6]
and something in my solar plexus makes me
—is that the inchoate heart?[7]—
stand up and run
[1] and took and took from me
[2] the blue door opens onto light
[3] is what I thought the world was whispering
[4] where once were shops and gardens—
remember the dandelion wine?
the witch who gasped when you drew
the ten of swords? penitentiary-like tenements now
[5] I remember Snow, your kitten, its one blue eye
[6] perennially wavelike, both a washing and
a wearing away
[7] a bud that can’t help but bloom and bloom and bloom
Christopher Nelson (earlier in Anacapa Review here) is the author of Snowlight (JackLeg Press, 2027), Blood Aria (University of Wisconsin Press, 2021), and six chapbooks, including Blue House, for which he received a New American Poets Fellowship from the Poetry Society of America. A recipient of the Amy Lowell Traveling Scholarship and a translation grant from the Goethe-Institut, he is the founding editor of Green Linden Press, a nonprofit publisher dedicated to poetic excellence and reforestation. He has edited two anthologies, Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and Its Diaspora—recipient of a Midwest Book Award—and Essential Queer Voices of U.S. Poetry. Visit christophernelson.info.
