Dissolution Song
by Karen Holmberg
Photo by Karen Holmberg
Dissolution Song
Finley Wildlife Refuge
∴
Nothing’s lost or done for. Untold gillions toil and till, slit
tight hulls, unshroud. A gust tussles lung lichen, tousling
the old god’s suit to loosen dusty issue. Tuned
to a twig, a lone soloist doles out tin-
lid din, gusto and lust the gist of it.
Doused in a sudden glut of sun, logs
list to ingot. Dull silt tilts gold.
The lids, sun- and song-stung, wince.
Gliding in—wild tidings,
tunings, do ti sol
outdoings. Odd
unison:
gonging
song.
∴
I
solo.
us unglues,
nulled. I dote on
longing, glut on loss—
its insidious sting.
Then sun tongues a lone willow
igniting lion’s gold, and in
gilded rods nodding tiny, loosening
moons I intuit soul ongoing. Glimpse
the dissolutionist insisting, tilting
ill to still, old to gold, loss to gloss; distilling
done to ode, guilt to gilt, going to go in. Lofting
us too: lifting our silt to lotus in its glinting slough.

Karen Holmberg’s two poetry volumes are The Perseids, winner of the Vassar Miller Prize, and Axis Mundi, winner of the John Ciardi Prize. In addition to poetry, she publishes lyric essays, which have appeared in At Length, Tupelo Quarterly, and New England Review. Her first young adult novel, The Collagist, won the 2021 Acheven Prize and was published by Regal Press/Fitzroy Editions in the spring of 2024. She teaches British literature, poetry writing, and letterpress printing at Oregon State University, where she is a member of the MFA in Creative Writing faculty.
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