Edited by Doug Holder

Michigan poet Jared Smith generously shared a poem with me during a recent interview at the office of The Somerville News. Smith, a former energy consultant with the federal government, who is now on the board of the New York Quarterly, has written policy, as well as a great deal of poetry. Here is a poem for a late winter‚Äôs eve. 

Dark Machinery of Maybe

The long eastern snow has slowed,
leaving only at last scattered tracks,
bud-swelled branches scattered broken,
mail boxes filled with empty envelopes,
homes with no one left to light the lights,
a swirl of missed meaning and metaphor.

I do not have to travel far today:
the flights to Boston, London, and Sydney
are delayed in the dark machinery of maybe.
A cup of soup steeped with seeds from Beijing
brought inside with pine logs from Wisconsin
brings the miles together between my fingers.

Bartok plays shocked digital destinations magnetically
in a living room where my hands are warmed before a fire.

—Jared Smith