"Hunger for Something" by Chase Twichell

Sometimes I long to be in the woodpile,

cut-apart trees soon to be smoke,

or even the smoke itself,

xxxxx

sinewy ghost of ash and air, going

wherever I want to, at least for a while.

xxxxx

Neither inside nor out,

neither lost nor home, no longer

a shape or a name, I’d pass through

xxxxx

all the broken windows of the world.

It’s not a wish for consciousness to end.

xxxxx

It’s not the appetite an army has

for its own emptying heart,

but a hunger to stand now and then

xxxxx

alone on the death-grounds,

where the dogs of the self are feeding.

xxxxx

“Hunger for Something” by Chase Twichell from The Snow Watcher published by Ontario Review Press. © 1998 by Chase Twichell.

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