Away By Rodger LeGrand

at the limits of how my ears 

can’t work as eyes, but I try 

not to not see with them your voice 

and the sorrowful notes that dance 

from between your lips in swirls 

and dips of sorries or hellos, 

a cadence of warms and colds 

or colds and warms, bereft 

and darker than the night,

which has already engulfed the moon 

and which now wraps around the glass puffs 

of your breath as you laugh 

and turn away

Rodger LeGrand is a Pushcart nominated poet and the author of several collections of poetry, including Studies for a Self-Portrait (Big Table, 2019) and Bells (Finishing Line Press, 2025). His poems have appeared in many literary journals, including Ravens Perch, Evening Street Review, The Cortland Review, and the Boston Literary Magazine. He has taught at MIT and Penn. Currently, he designs humanitarian education courses at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative.