by L. Ward Abel (January 2026)
A Crossing
=
Out above the wide angle
where the great round shape
becomes apparent,
=
remnants of walls
outline former lives
in spaces more narrow than tall
without canopies
=
that would limit the mind
with proximities,
they rather open an overhead view
and despite the solar wind
still tilt to that
light.
=
=
=
Moving Parts
=
Fewer moving parts, maybe just one
is as close as I can get
to deconstructing the simple.
=
Hidden from the wise
clear to the child,
this instant
may be the most important one—
no, is the most important one—
no, is the only one.
=
Its flow is illusion,
its path is hindsight,
the width and length
just distractions,
and to ask for meaning
is to fail the test.
=
Philosophies of confusion
with layers and
probabilities
garble the clarity
of that single drop,
its own singular river.
=
Fewer moving parts, maybe none
to the point of no further reduction,
is everything.
=
=
=
Truth is a Hard Freedom
=
Truth is a hard freedom—
one that leaves its wounded
unable to overcome
dogged granite-and-flesh
verity etched, open, fatal,
with misplaced purpose
fading like
a boomer’s
tat.
=
Truth is a hard freedom—
its whelps made from belief
in the lie and not considering
the coming scars. No forks,
just straight lines
offering little
but shadows
under the high clouds
of
consequence.
=
=
=
The Unison of Light with Breathing
=
He built an ant hill by the fence line
and thought it was the world.
=
And he painted too
the dry fields there—
westerly, ragged, worn-out,
their only tinge
the blood on his brush.
=
He let the grotto go wild
near a long wall of cottonwoods
until a unison of light
with breathing
would later return.
=
And he wrote with
something of an accent—
like ones heard in old
groceries on dirt road corners
known to locals and
only to a few of them.
=
His novels explored the theory
of colors
without color, without words
just shades, gradation
from hearing to vision,
etcetera.
=
He built an ant hill
by the fence line
and thought
it was the world.
=
=
=
The Sky is a Wide Road
=
The Sky is a wide road
without a given name,
a place that dances on
thinnish film bubbled
into roundness giving
way while it leaves
no tracks
to follow.
=
Mine is pockmarked
dissonant, aware of each
friction point, blue-gray
mindful, empty, set in
motion some time ago—
serrated working above
within, still
in progress.
=
To sort things
you have to look out
for views that may not be
real, though seem familiar
like the mirror in the
mezzanine (it’s me)—
the stranger
desperate
to fly.
=
The sky is a wide road—
it depends on the angle
of light as to color and
geography, like lines on
a Utah cliff, its past layers
ripple in real time without
compass roses—
fading into what seems
a west
of much greater
height.
-=
=
Table of Contents
L. Ward Abel‘s work has appeared in hundreds of journals (Rattle, Versal, The Reader, Galway Review, Worcester Review, Main Street Rag, others), and he is the author of four full collections and eleven chapbooks of poetry, including Green Shoulders—New and Selected Poems 2003–2023 (Silver Bow, 2023), and The Teller’s Road (Bottlecap, 2025). He is a retired lawyer and teacher of literature, he writes and plays music, and lives in rural Georgia.
Follow NER on Twitter @NERIconoclast
