Thieves

By Todd Davis

We filch
happiness
from the seed
pods of touch-
me-nots,
the explosion
of their husks
as they curl
backward
to expose
the future,
the leap
forward
into dreaming
dust, into
waiting out
winter
with hopes
a speckled
horn
will blossom
and bees
will crawl
inside it
to blow
a coupled
music.

 

Todd Davis is the author of seven full-length collections of poetry–Coffin Honey, Native Species, Winterkill, In the Kingdom of the Ditch, The Least of These, Some Heaven, and Ripe—as well as of a limited edition chapbook, Household of Water, Moon, and Snow. His poetry has appeared in Ted Kooser’s syndicated newspaper column American Life in Poetry and has been anthologized in such books as The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry and Bedford/St. Martin’s textbook, Approaching Literature. His poems have won the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize, the Chautauqua Editor’s Prize, the Midwest Book Award, the ForeWord INDIES Book of the Year Bronze and Silver Awards, and the Bloomsburg University Book Prize. More than 400 of his poems have appeared in such noted journals and magazines as American Poetry Review, Iowa Review, Ecotone, North American Review, Indiana Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Missouri Review, Poetry Northwest, Sycamore Review, Gettysburg Review, Orion, West Branch, River Styx, and Poetry Daily. He teaches creative writing, American literature, and environmental studies at Pennsylvania State University’s Altoona College.