Letter from Future Haunts

Brett Shaw
| poetry
*
—after “Letter to Someone Living Fifty Years from Now” 
by Matthew Olzmann

*
Though the bees are dead, we still have flies.
They’re good pollinators. They keep

what manages growth. What doesn’t,
they manage in stillness.

We still write about the grass—

its still, diagonal march beneath wind and rain,
still climbing the hills that hold our dead—

Though the sun grew scorching,
the grass grew resistant. We used to

hate that. Resistance. We used to believe
nothing should slow us down.

Brett Shaw is a poet and educator living in Alabama. Recent work appears or is forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Sycamore Review, and elsewhere. His work has received support from the Community of Writers. He holds an MFA from the University of Alabama.

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