Pastoral Mistake
The music of my imagination
held a wrong note (rope).
The columns of my fantasied mansion
stood puncturing teeth.
Even the canopy bed I dreamt of
pressed a lid, leaden with origin
over head—
each scenery like a painting
brittley described
ownership, serration,
breach, a fine row of (gallowing) trees—
What here is arable
for us all?
What here does not, us,
till?
Originally from Nashville, Tennessee, Lisa Williams now lives and teaches in Danville, Kentucky. She has published three books of poems: The Hammered Dulcimer (1998); Woman Reading to the Sea (2008) and Gazelle in the House (2014). A recipient of the Barnard Women Poets Prize and the May Swenson Poetry Award, she is series editor for the University Press of Kentucky New Poetry and Prose Series, and a professor at Centre College.
(c) 2020 Lisa Williams