Present Tense
Michael Metivier | Poetry
The flute is older than the wheel
and once was just
as everywhere: on your back
idling in some fescue meadow
or bent, picking over cobble
on a steel-gray shore or upright,
watching streams of wolves depart
a spent kill—you would hear it,
and it would carry you.
Michael Metivier is a poet, lexicographer, editor, and musician. His work has appeared in recent years in Poetry, Kenyon Review, Orion, and Prairie Schooner, among other publications. His poem “Glacial, Erratic” was published as half of a split chapbook with Erín Moure by the journal Columba in 2022. He is an editor at Merriam-Webster and lives with his family in Vermont.