Dawn

By Rebecca Lehmann / Issue 15

I wrote a poem
to you and pinned it

to your door.
I wrote a rainbow

I wrote a skylark
I wrote a dozen

other birds I’ve
only heard of

never seen.
I wrote in couplets

because I wanted
to see someone

walk over the horizon
and I wanted

it to be
someone other

than myself
in a cable knit sweater

dragging my fingers
through the splintered dawn.

On each finger
a man I want to bend

into the wind.

REBECCA LEHMANN is the author of the poetry collections Ringer (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019) and Between the Crackups (Salt, 2011). Her poetry has been published in Tin House, Ploughshares, The Iowa Review and other journals, and featured on The Slowdown with Tracy K. Smith, The Academy of American Poets’ Poem a Day project, and the New York Public Library’s Poem in Your Pocket program. She lives in Indiana.