"Days of 2021" by Matthew James Hodgson

Dare not I yet impose an unfit form,

Dreaming away at the two photographs

Compared (three years apart) with a heavy head.

Across the shared driveway,

And fenced in silver rings between the great

Pine trees, a song of girls’ laughter was heard

Often enough, between the Shepherd’s bark.

Framed by the rusted screen or chipping paint,

A world appeared all overcome by clouds,

Call it cloud-dump. They were hanging with pins

Above the thin Bear’s Paw, their summits lost

(Or just concealed) somewhere in the stratosphere.

Matthew James Hodgson is temporarily a high school English teacher at Harlem High School, near the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in North Montana. After completing a master’s degree at the University of Chicago, where he studied psychoanalysis and Romantic-era poetry, he turned to hobbies including printmaking, harpistry, and translating journals from Hungarian to English.