by Mitchell Nobis

“Who was your first love?” they
asked as if love meant more
than the unknown then, but
my first love was not knowing,
not having to know, having
people who did the knowing for
you while you dug around,
explored the woods & the world
with mud on your feet and
fertile soil under fingernails.
You watched birds fly–
barn swallows fast like blinking,
like wind & what the eye cannot see
but is there, moving, swift–
while you were supposed to
be shooting them. You’d use
the sight to focus on a sparrow
pulling loose its dead feathers,
its fluff drifting, caught on a breeze.
You didn’t know where it would go,
caught in the trap of beginning to sense.
To yearn for it, to know it, what leaves.

Mitchell Nobis is a writer and K-12 teacher in Metro Detroit. His poetry has appeared in Whale Road Review, The Night Heron Barks, HAD, and others. He facilitates Teachers as Poets for the National Writing Project and hosts the Wednesday Night Sessions reading series. Find him at @MitchNobis and mitchnobis.com or falling apart on a basketball court.