Poetry - Issue 12 | June 2011
Siesta
by Tim
Siesta
These latitudes bring unaccustomed blessings
like mangoes falling on my tin-roofed shack,
the solitude to hear my own confession,
and penance that renounces all I lack.
I’ve passed a grateful season on this couch
in rooms as stark and naked as a prayer
with plywood walls in need of human touch
and fingers tracing nothing in the air.
But outside in the garden where the rains
entreat a teeming lushness from the earth
lianas, epiphytes, and creeping vines
enact a strangling forest of rebirth.
At rest, I lie untouched above the fray
with fragrant strife and rumors of decay.
About the author
Tim Hawkins has lived and traveled widely throughout North America, Southeast Asia and Latin America, where he has worked as a journalist, technical writer, communications manager, and teacher in international schools. He currently lives in his hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan. His writing has appeared in numerous print and online publications, most recently in Four and Twenty, Iron Horse Literary Review, The Pedestal Magazine, and Shot Glass Journal, and is forthcoming in Blueline, The Midwest Quarterly, and Verse Wisconsin.