Night Crossing – Poetry by Jay Wickersham

Midnight. My son sprawls
in the tangle of his sheets.
Below, his general
measures cannon shots

toward a cliff of piled-up books.
Across the wood-grain river
a bridge spans toward the city.
We walk across together,

my son and I. The walls
and towers loom above.
We see a toppled arch,
a house without a roof,

the castle where the king
and court are hatching schemes,
where history proceeds
and prisoners have names.

I feel his anxious grip,
the press of finger bone.
Some day I’ll have to stop
while he goes on alone.

---

About the Poet

Jay Wickersham’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Agni, the William & Mary Review, the Formalist, The High Window, Yankee, and the Harvard Review (an essay on having Seamus Heaney as a teacher). He is a member of the Powow River Poets in Newburyport, MA. He works professionally as an architect and lawyer, addressing problems of urban sustainability and climate change. 

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