Chair is to throne/
Char is to fire/

Glory exists along a continuum.

And whoever wanted to destroy—to make an act of destruction—
failed to recognize that the chair would be
no less a chair after it was burned.

Its glory is its obduracy in the wreck.

Glory gilded in black. A light fizzing of smoke.

Good-bye, it says, who sees atmosphere through itself.
Good-bye to anything less.

—

Elizabeth Robinson is the author, most recently, of Blue Heron (Mountain West Series) and Rumor (Free Verse Editions/Parlor Press). Her book, Vulnerability Index, is forthcoming from Ahsahta Press in 2019. With Jennifer Phelps, Robinson co-edited Quo Anima: spirituality and innovation in contemporary women’s poetry, just out from University of Akron Press.