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These Days
John Krumberger

These days I start out with nothing
but a blank page, the cough
of a truck outside switching gears,
a sad November sky, and matted leaves
on the ground of a city
whose memory of wildness—
asphalted and numbed over—
returns sometimes in dreams.
I drink my coffee, invoking the names
of the dead, then begin
to search the empty places,
picking up each rock
to gaze beneath where there is this
and this and that. Pay attention,
I tell myself, not sure
I know what I’m looking for.

—
John Krumberger has published a volume of poems titled The Language of Rain and Wind (Backwaters Press, 2008), and a chapbook, In a Jar Somewhere (Black Dirt Press, 1999). His latest collection of poems, Because Autumn, was published by Main Street Rag Press in 2016. John has a PhD in psychology from the University of Minnesota and he works as a psychologist in private practice in St. Paul, MN.

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