Two Poems – Alexander Etheridge

Pure Green

I walk further into myself—inside a waking
dream, I walk further into dark.
The trees and sky here change,
becoming ten thousand years ago,
and suddenly I’m by a cold stream in this
immensely old, immediately
present November. If I return to my world, now,
I’d be, in a way, centuries old.

Either I’m falling deeper into dreaming,
or the dream is overtaking the world.
I’m in a pure green place,
rain falls through mist, echoing
in my bones. I was born into
these tiny sounds of growing stems.
Without knowing it, I’ve always walked
toward the stars of this other world,

toward the mountains and snows
of its living fable. The darkness here
is filled with light, led by
the mind of light. This dark
shines in a season of paradise, the first moment
of truth in the last moment
of lost wandering. 

Letter to My Other Self

I’m patient for the unfolding wildflower, patient
for the way a dream rises in dark, and bewildered
by all the ways a dream fails us.

I’m curious how an open fire
flies up a dry wooden staircase, all the way
through the house, and up to the stars.

I’m hungry for the whirling eye of
a blizzard, and for the first winter on earth.
After a storm that night so long ago
felled leaves made a prayer
to the fox’s grave. Death is hungry,
but forever patient.

Days are relentless, always
marching on, anxious for the end of time—
their pleas
bloom up into dusk

as they move through all the horrors,
all the miracles — and their seconds
forget us, leave us, just as we
remember. But I’m patient for the grief
they always bring, and for the seasons
burning into the future. I’m hungry
for the great loop of time,
disguising itself as a straight line. I wait

for the hours to cripple me from the inside out,
and I’m never afraid. I wait

to meet myself at last, the me with
a silent mind, and silent eyes — the me

patient in the dim immensity of space,
waiting for himself who also
waits, writing
a letter to his death, a letter

to the me who drew his first breath, his last
breath, beginning there
where it all ended.

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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.

Art: Trees in Motion (Blue) & (Monochrome Black and White), 2 visual poems by Robert Frede Kenter (c) 2025.