Dylan Stover
καπνός
It is always the same dream of rising: the time is late autumn, when only the oaks have any leaves left, and I am a silent passenger in the family car, staring out at the russets and browns. The sky is slate, the sun a smear. Suddenly—involuntarily—I escape the weight of the vehicle and rise like a ghostly plume of consciousness, an eye unbodied. Above the hills I climb, my gaze fixed yet impassive, like the mind of seasons. Change becomes me: I am trees fast-greening and fast-graying under snow; I am birds shifting cornfields for continents. It becomes me as the opening of the smallest flower and the wind that scatters it; the fresh-emerged butterfly and the belly of the bird that surrounds it. It comes to me as bondage to the earth’s pulsations, the ceaseless revolutions of its tribe.
moon over our camp—
how long till fire
unmakes these sticks
Note: καπνός (or “kapnos”) is a Greek word for smoke. The ancient philosopher Heraclitus used it when he once wrote, “If all things were made into smoke, the nose would know best.” And then: “Thus in the abyssal dark the soul is known by its smell.”
About the Author
Dylan Stover is a poet living in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. His work has appeared in various journals worldwide. His first collection of poetry, What’s in Front of the Sky, is available on Bookshop.org and Amazon.