Giant II

O earth,

little landscaped

terrace of cold, coffered seed,

the restless sleep of ants,

heavy-jawed—

it is time to get serious about the sun.

Let us lift the giant like a carapace

from where his elbows and heels have drummed into moss

and sheared

wool, ice

and igneous rock of what remotest place has now

heard of us:

Desolation, Ittoqqortoormiit, Tristan, Nightingale—

Let it be spring by election,

time to take down the winter wreathes torn by birds.

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Laurie Lamon has poems in The Atlantic, The New Republic, Plume, Ploughshares, J Journal, Innisfree Poetry Journal, The Literary Review, and others. She has published two poetry collections with CavanKerry Press: The Fork Without Hunger, and Without Wings. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and was selected by Donald Hall as a Witter Bynner Fellow in 2007. She currently holds the Amy Ryan Endowed professorship at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington, and is the poetry editor for the literary journal Rock & Sling. Her work is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Arts & Letters Journal of Contemporary Culture, and Innisfree Poetry Journal.