A Grave Sonnet
I’ve never felt a task so near
it couldn’t be avoided—
at least until another beer,
or time, had undeployed it.
My marching orders dissipate.
My atoms don’t like whirling.
While men of gold gesticulate,
my stillness will be sterling.
From open pit to outer space,
motel to catacomb,
I’ve never met an empty place
I couldn’t call my home.
I’ve never suffered an embrace
without a touch of loam.
R. Nemo Hill is the author of a novel, Pilgrim’s Feather (Quantuck Lane); a book-length poem based on an H.P Lovecraft story, The Strange Music of Erich Zann (Hippocampus Press); a chapbook, Prolegomena To An Essay On Satire (Modern Metrics); and two collections of poems from Dos Madres Press, When Men Bow Down (2012) and In No Man’s Ear (2016). Sole editor and publisher of EXOT BOOKS, www.exot.typepad.com/exotbooks, he lives near New York City, on Long Island.