Two Poems by Andres Rojas

UNDERWORLD for my father

A pale heron flew over swamp water,
its shadow on shadows. We both saw it.

You were alone but didn’t yet know.
What don’t cypresses know of others

that they must? Some blessed trees. We
are nothing but others, nothing.

DECEMBER DOE High Springs, Florida

Every miracle is an escape:

windshield ice, her hulk
closer than my headlights,

a second hand crossing midnight,
a sleight of fate or faith.

Later, I walked the grass
in a Greek chorus of frost,

a Kyrie eleison

this side of her leap, the road
a line in time between us:

a fleeting scatter of does
three weeks back, near here,

a scramble of white sails--
those of galleons or rafts--

toward a horizon of forest.

...

Andres Rojas has an MFA and a JD from the University of Florida. His poems have most recently appeared or are forthcoming in, among others, Barrow Street, Colorado Review, Massachusetts Review, New England Review, and Notre Dame Review.