Blank Spaces
At the fringes of the calendar,
before the numbers begin and after they end
are the spaces that could have been days.
Here is where all of our lost hours go,
The moments we were silent
when we should have spoken,
the actions we should have taken.
We can dream ourselves into blank spaces,
choices we wish we’d made,
lives we weren’t finished living.
JAMES CIHLAR is the author of Undoing (Little Pear Press), and his poems have appeared in Painted Bride Quarterly, Quercus, Bloom, Minnesota Monthly, Northeast, The James White Review, Briar Cliff Review, Verse Daily, and in the anthologies Aunties (Ballantine), Regrets Only (Little Pear Press), and Nebraska Presence (Backwaters Press). The Books Review Editor for American Poetry Journal, he has also published reviews in the Minneapolis Star Tribune and on the poetry site Coldfront. The recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship for Poetry and a Glenna Luschei Award from Prairie Schooner, Cihlar lives in St. Paul.
