Camber by Gale Batchelder


What if, at the end, it’s just untitled? No pathway
to the summary, theme, gist, where you stood and why,
all you gave it when the day was full and the rest
that you gave on empty, the chilling, the childing, warming
sun, photo of your scarf-held hair, the oh, come on now,
camber of you fitted to the journey, breath and breadth,
daily bread given and forgiven too, one rain or gloom,
heartbeat surprise of thunder, you set soaring by daub
of paint or tumbling hard to dirt, the do you suppose
we could, serendipity of always the train station clock
under which to rendezvous, the assay the sorting of chaff
and leaf, eyelash and lip, your one body breathing held
fiercely tender by its skin, the leaving behind, the never mind
and not-yet-mine, tell me again, where you stood and when.

Gale Batchelder has work published in Colorado Review, Lily Poetry Review, What Rough Beast (Indolent Books), SpoKe4, Amethyst Arsenic, and White Whale Review. Her book, Chalk Song, a poetic collaboration with Judson Evans and Susan Berger-Jones, was published in 2021 by Lily Poetry Review Books. Chalk Song is an engagement with “Cave of Forgotten Dreams,” Werner Herzog’s documentary about paleolithic cave art. Gale’s work is included in two anthologies of ekphrastic poems, New Smoke and Triumph of Poverty, from Off the Park Press. Recently she has collaborated with teXtmoVes in a performance of her poem, The Body Apologies. Gale lives in Cambridge, MA.