Three Poems | Alexander Etheridge

An Exile’s Dream
   —after Tu Fu

I dreamt last night of such strange flowers
wild on a hill, red-yellow moon flowers
taking the air slowly, drifting in shreds
of mist.  They lit my way through a dim gorge

until I reached the shore of a pine-hidden
pond—The night petals glowed and hovered
over the water’s jade-blue lotus blossoms.
I woke and knew I would find home again.


 
Where to Look for Hope

A flutter of shadow over the veil
between life and death
A shadow

on borderlands of moonlight
where thin jackals 
hunt in the dust
Shadows thickly  

cover shadows in the forest
as a cold sun sets

We are all
alone
We are 

bound to our shadows
and we sense the world 
coming apart
in the war
between fire and dark
We sense ourselves 
 
being torn by time by
silent fugues 

But as we see the road
filling with hail
grief and fear refigures us
into new life
glowing blue
We find our eyes 

can look into
a lifetime of shadow
at the promise of light

which is itself 
a light 



Single Word

Each sundown is different,
the sky changing
with its fingerprints of cloud and light— 
Redfire, electric hazel shades, 

rusty orange-glow, quietly 
shifting before us,

as if run by the invisible machinery
of angels.

No twilight sky needs us,
yet we stare into it, looking
for something that may complete us,
or give voice 
to a long-dead language,
or to one lost

and sacred word, like the salvation  
briefly known by our world 

when it was newly born.

About the author:

Alexander Etheridge has been developing his poems and translations since 1998. His poems have been featured in The Potomac Review, Museum of Americana, Ink Sac, Welter Journal, The Cafe Review, The Madrigal, Abridged Magazine, Susurrus Magazine, The Journal, Roi Faineant Press, and many others. He was the winner of the Struck Match Poetry Prize in 1999, and a finalist for the Kingdoms in the Wild Poetry Prize in 2022. He is the author of, God Said Fire, and Snowfire and Home.