A man puts on his jacket made of rain,

goes to answer the afternoon shadows

practicing stillness. He enters the quiet hours

with the boxelders.

Both discuss the ills of old age, the joy

of waking among birdsong, how sleep sparks

from the body of air. The man shakes his hair

like a wooly mammoth. The stillness

is dormant in the tree’s buds waiting for spring

to release greenness and mirrors in a stream.

The man knows the best places to stand,

performing the soft work of doing nothing.

The jacket of rain knows how to arrive slowly.

Martin Willitts Jr, a Comstock Review editor, has 25 chapbooks including the Turtle Island Quarterly Editor’s Choice Award, “The Wire Fence Holding Back the World” (Flowstone Press, 2017), plus 21 full-length collections including the Blue Light Award 2019, “The Temporary World.”  His new full-length is “Harvest Time” (Deerbrook Press, 2021).