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The Fourth River

A Journal of Nature and Place-based Writing Published by the Chatham University MFA Program
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Good Grief

June 30, 2023

By Trevor Moffa

 

Home is a heavy place
a mass of gravitational consequence


an island of volcanic rock and hot memory
How many times I’ve agreed


that my island is a paradise
rewriting the inferno


the heartbeat and good grief
how many times have you done the same


How quickly a small circle
becomes one big corner


We fight like animals
with nowhere left to go


like two canaries in the same mine
pecking and shouting hard to prove


who gets which dark hollow
to confirm the other is still there


Trevor Moffa is a poet and former coal miner, park ranger, bookseller, and sandwich artist from Pittsburgh, PA. Recent work published or forthcoming in Chautauqua, Sleet, Sierra Nevada Review, Midway Journal, and Under a Warm Green Linden.

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