Three poems by Tom Montag

The Immense

emptiness,
wind and sky,
stars through

the trees.
The night's
silence.

What I seek,
what I haven't
found yet,

it's there
and I'm still
looking.

This is
not the end
of anything.



If Not This Light

If not this light,
December wind

winding its way
to morning,

the birds resting
on the promise of

warmth, the grass
still green beneath

blue-green sky.
We have never

been here before,
exactly.  The heart

is ripe with
the fullness of

things.  This is what
love looks like.



The Curtain

I have seen the red
curtain shimmering,
almost dream-like.

What's the other
side of it, I don't know--
dream, or death, or

fierce remembering.
I hear my father
calling.  "Boys," he says,

"time for chores."  It is
not time for chores.  My
father is dead.  The farm

belongs to someone
else.  He calls out
from the other side.

Wind shakes the curtain
between us.  Day dawns,
glowing.  The things

I love are moving
in this soft shine of
morning.  Of hope

greater than death.
"Father,"  I say,
"the chores are done."

Tom Montag is most recently the author of In This Place:  Selected Poems 1982-2013.  He is a contributing writer at Verse-Virtual.  In 2015, he was the featured poet at Atticus Review (April) and Contemporary American Voices (August) and at year's end received Pushcart Prize nominations from Provo Canyon Review and Blue Heron Review.  Other poems will be found at Hamilton Stone Review, The Homestead Review, Little Patuxent Review, Mud Season Review, Poetry Quarterly, Third Wednesday, and elsewhere.