#MIDDLEBURY
On My Sober Anniversary
Noelle Kocoty
A plausible place, this sea of air.
Somehow, the fragments of a later
Time get pulled out of the memory.
The earth surges up, the snow covers
Us. The blackened lungs of a bird
Cry out in the shaped bones
Of my hands. Walls of dust,
The bright little stars above us,
Who can crawl into the tiny black
Sky with reverse symmetry?
My brother, you really filled my head,
And now it’s time for me to fly
Out with or without the beautiful passages
Where my mind used to be.
About this poem
“I wrote this poem on my sober anniversary. Last Advent, I did a major internal ‘housecleaning’ with someone who helped put my feet upon a really good path, and the poem came out of that.” – Noelle Kocot
About Noelle Kocot
Noelle Kocot is the author of “Phantom Pains of Madness” (Wave Books, 2016). She teaches at The New School in New York and is the poet laureate of Pemberton Borough, N.J.
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day@poets.org.
(c) 2016 Noelle Kocot. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
