A.R. Ammons

James Brasfield (1952- ) has twice been a Senior Fulbright Fellow to Ukraine and has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. James has published 3 volumes of poetry.

Then One

When the circumstance takes 

on a salience, as a

crushing pressure, then one,

addled by the possible closures,

the tangles that might 

snap taut in a loop

or other unfigurable construct,

then on

dreams of drift-logs far at sea

where room can wear drifts out

winds change

and few places show one can't

embark

from and then on thinks finally

with tight appreciation

of nothingness

or if not that far of 

things that loosen or come apart.  

— James Brasfield