By Aarik Danielsen

Tuck into the Nebraska hills with me.

Pull the pines up and over our bodies like a blanket.

Should one of us rise, let it be to pour coffee from a tin pitcher;

to watch the early-hour rain slough down the roof and return

to leaves grown by relative showers, leaves the sun now bores through.

Everything between and around us is elemental.

The one who rises walks to the table, flips to today’s page

within the book of poems we read together, take up as bread.

~~~

Aarik Danielsen is a writer and longtime arts journalist. His debut collection of night essays will be published by Cornerstone Press in summer 2027. His work appears in Pleiades, Tupelo Quarterly, Image Journal, Split Lip, and more. He lives in Omaha, Nebraska with his partner, the writer Holly Pelesky.