Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, most recently Escape Envy (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2021). His poems have appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, River Styx, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes and tries to stay out of trouble.
Return to Form
You start painting again, years since existence
seemed an art worth following
through light & shadow, sunrise & sunflowers.
You purchase brushes, paper, canvas, watercolors, oils,
as though summoning a spirit to its earthly form.
You paint to find your place in absences.
Hand tenses as it strokes the page-like skin.
Eyes peek elsewhere
as through one end of a hollow log.
The Field Guide Poetry Magazine 