The West Review
  • Home
  • About
    • About
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Contact
    • Masthead
  • Current Issue
  • Shop
    • Bookstore
    • Subscriptions
  • Archives
  • Blog

Benjamin Cutler
​
Here, Where I Sleep


Our dogwood.
Our magnolia.

Neither will bloom
until I wake.

Between them:
the same silver

stream I hear
only when I read

wonder or write
grief or pray

to any forgotten god.
The high rushing

song of a thousand
timorous birds who flee

these low gray clouds.
Always, the season: white

winter: blue breath,
your voice

the falling snow
covering me

wholly—here,
where I sleep.

Then: morning, new
sun—my waking
​
body arched and wet.
Blossoms everywhere.





​NEXT



Benjamin Cutler is an award-winning poet and author of The Geese Who Might be Gods (Main Street Rag, 2019). His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize numerous times and has appeared in Zone 3, Tar River Poetry, and EcoTheo Review, among others. Cutler teaches high-school English and creative writing in the Southern Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina where he lives with his family and frequents the local rivers and trails.
  • Home
  • About
    • About
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Contact
    • Masthead
  • Current Issue
  • Shop
    • Bookstore
    • Subscriptions
  • Archives
  • Blog