Welcome back to The Daily Poem here in the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern.

Today's poem is by Rina Espiont. I've been on a bit of a Rina Espiod kick. Her most recent

collection, and after all, is just so good. And I ran across another poem that I wanted to share

with you. I think I've read one other one in the last month or two from this collection.

Her work has appeared in many journals, anthologies, and websites,

and has earned national and international awards,

including the T.S. Eliot Prize and Poetry,

the Richard Wilbur Award, the Howard Nemerov Prize,

the May Sarton Award, the Robert Frost Tree at My Window Prize for translation,

several honors from the New England Poetry Club, the Poetry Society of America,

the Ministry of Culture of the Dominican Republic,

and a lifetime achievement award from Salem State College.

It's only to say she is one of our very best working poets.

She has published 10 full-length books and three chapbooks,

comprising poetry's essays and short stories

in both English and her native Spanish. And the poem that I'm going to read today is called

Look Long Enough, and it's from, and after all, as I said, her 2018 collection. Highly recommend

this collection, which is from Abelmuse Press. This is how it goes. Look long enough at anything

you know and you will cease to know it. Or not cease, but struggle to reclaim it, wonder whether

you ever wore that shirt hanging just so over your absent body, every crease complex with shadows,

or you pull a feather from your old comforter,

and altogether altered by the flight of phantom geese,

...