Charles Rafferty
Pursuit
However wide the wilderness
the path is always narrow —
the singing of a single sparrow
warbles at its emptiness.
The way to her can never last.
Her bootprints blur in drifting snow
deep in the widest wilderness
on a path that's always narrow.
The moonless pines don't acquiesce
to let me pass like an arrow.
I lodge in bark. I draw the bow.
I shoot myself from loneliness —
across a widening wilderness
on a path that's always narrow.
Bio
Recent poems have appeared in The New Yorker and The Literary Review. Currently, I direct the MFA program at Albertus Magnus College.