West

by Philip Newton

Here at the edge of things
the place where everything
stops
you can hold on to it
put one foot in the ocean
and keep one leg
on the curve of coast
You won’t be cornered
in some dismal canyon
smelling of tar and leather
You know there’s a place
to jump off

The sun disappears
safely extinguished
every night behind the waves
Its last fires reveal where
toothed creatures and
lost iron lie
Its ghost crosses the water
to east west shores
Once I went that way
and watched it rise
again from the deep

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Philip Newton is a writer, musician and stonemason living in Oregon. In addition to publishing one novel, TERRANE (Unsolicited Press, 2018), shorter works have appeared or are upcoming in Ginosko Literary, Letters Journal (Yale), The Hamilton Stone Review, Roanoke Review, Gargoyle, and other periodicals. He is a graduate of the Sonoma State University writing program.