at four a.m. dark snow
drifts down in grainy
widely spaced flakes, falling
the way fears emerge
one by one from the moon
hiding like God hides
behind inscrutable clouds
my mother had a name
for this: instead of mind
she called it Roberta
leaving the bed
alone, making coffee
peacefully smoking
cigarettes, thinking
about Calvert and Coke
the poem I did not write
is not the poem
Rita Dove did not write
although hers was better
and did console me
one cold morning
in late February
with disease wandering
the streets, clothed in white
the garden buried
beneath such a crushing
burden, that it also
might never breathe again
and the fading
of my own body
into the alphabets
of all forgotten tongues
Robert Tremmel has published poems and academic articles in a wide range of journals, as well as five collections of poetry, including The Records of Kosho the Toad (Bottom Dog Press, 2018). His most recent collection is The Return of the Naked Man (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2021), which won the Brick Road Poetry Prize.