Allison Grayhurst writes

I can see the sun

but I can’t be the sun 

or know the sun 
in this wilderness clearing 
cutting up, suctioning out my insides. 
Sing alone over the wide span 
of dead rolls, broken by a secret 
and wounds dried up, salt hard, 
hard with condensed pressure.  
Creak and slide over insect glitter, sun 
beams shaping the edge of the bank. I am a 
fish in a polluted stream. Tires and concrete, 
broken blocks blocking my way to the river. 
Evolving is hard, takes time to earn a body  
that can leap over high obstacles, conquer resisting currents 
while starved of a clean home. It takes a fool’s joy  
and an easy detachment to soar far out of the nest, lift 
up and skim the skin of golden warmth. But I am a fish 
meant to find shelter at the bottom bed of the ocean,  
not in rivers or in streams, not leaping, but slow, slow,  
surfing the cold sandy terrain,  
skylight forgotten, sunlight undreamed.