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LAURA THEIS

I went out today looking for wonder

Found a wind,

two ducks.

Fifteen clouds shaped like

questions containing their own answer,

the way only water can

shapeshift itself.

I found a tree that had decided to start its spring early,

regardless of the general consensus.

I found a stick that had made

a dog’s morning.

I found a well-rested sun with a six-hour workday

and a penchant for early nights.

Cycling back home on the towpath at nightfall,

I startled water rats.

The moon was a luminous finger nail

reflected below in the darkness to both sides of my wheels.

The flooding had turned the river

into a mirror, the meadows into a lake.

I wanted to show it to you,

each incredible marvel, and say:

Look, oh, look,

see how the good world still holds you.

Laura Theis writes in her second language. Her work appears in Poetry, Oxford Poetry, The Irish Times, Magma, Rattle, Mslexia, Berlin Lit, etc. Accolades include the Caterpillar Poetry Prize, Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize, Oxford Brookes Poetry Prize, AM Heath Prize, Mogford Prize, and a Forward Prize nomination. Her debut, how to extricate yourself, an Oxford Poetry Library Book-of-the-Month, was nominated for the Elgin Award and won the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize. A Spotter’s Guide To Invisible Things received the Live Canon Collection Prize and the Arthur Welton Award from the Society of Authors. Her latest publications are Introduction To Cloud Care (Broken Sleep Books) and her forthcoming children’s debut, Poems From A Witch’s Pocket (Emma Press).

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