Richard Manly Heiman lives in California’s Sierra Nevada Gold Country. He is a wildfire lookout in summer, a teacher in winter. Publications include Rattle, the British Fantasy Society’s Horizons, London Grip, and others. His URL is https://writerrichardmanlyheiman.godaddysites.com/. Richard is inspired by visual art, nature, and waking dreams.
A Little Closer
You mixed sea salt tang
with deep soil, root-washed
in yew and oak and rowan,
sang it all to us, and we
imagined that was always
going to be–something
so razored, elemental, like
the first and slenderest stone
beneath the kiln house wall,
steel gray in a red rose land
we thought we knew.