Last Things

Last Things

Michael T. Young

I’m always struggling for a way
to write about who you are, Father,
because it’s easier to tell someone
how morning light splices the first minutes
into thousands of tree-lined avenues,
or the smell of wet magnolia petals
revive our steps on the spring hillsides.
These are things people have held,
even if only briefly, as a day ended.
But that’s it: they ended and will end
and after the last spring passes,
after the final petal molders into soil
and even after light ferments into
a fracture of fading stars, you will be
as you always have been: what is enough.

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Michael T. Young
Poet

Michael’s third full-length collection, The Infinite Doctrine of Water, was longlisted for the Julie Suk Award. He received a Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. He received honorable mention for the 2022 New Jersey Poets Prize. His work has been featured on Verse Daily and The Writer's Almanac. It has also appeared in numerous journals including Lily Poetry Review, OneArt, Pinyon, and Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Photography by Jakob Owens