About the Column:

Poems of our Climate is a weekly poetry column run by Oliver Egger ’23. Egger also runs the literary magazine group Route 9, whose literary magazine The Lavender released its fourth volume on Thursday, April 28! Read Issue Four and past issues of The Lavender at Route9.org.  If you are interested in having your poem featured in this column, Poems of our Climate, please email your work directly to oegger@wesleyan.edu. 

 

mid-march

By Milly Hopkins ’25

I was once told a story

About an army

Who marched

at the same frequency

as the suspension bridge

carrying them until

it wasn’t

And they went plummeting down,

their legs frozen mid

march,

Which they had not been wary of.

 

it had rattled, and

I heard they found the sound amusing

And began to whistle a marching tune

of the frequency they shared with its moving.

 

Watching from the shore,

Their bodies too caught the wind like sails

and blew them deep blue down

Into the great white wash.

 

a system is more sensitive to its own frequencies

than that of the air

And so they went tumbling

I wonder if they felt free,

falling into the very sea

which has climbed up through the concrete.

 

Their possibilities extinguished

but not exhausted

I like to think they kept marching all the way down

Past what they were and could have been

free from the horizon’s endless stare

down its steps, tumbling mid-march

Into the great white wash.

 

About the Poet: Milly Hopkins, who doesn’t take herself seriously enough to write a bio, hopes you have a nice day.