Edwin Romond

Edwin Romond is the author of five books of poetry. His most recent, Man at the Railing (NYQ Books), won the 2022 Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Award. He has received poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and from both the New Jersey and Pennsylvania State Councils on the Arts. His poem, “Champion,” won the 2013 New Jersey Poetry Prize and Garrison Keillor has twice featured Romond’s poetry on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac. He lives in Wind Gap, PA with his wife, Mary.

April at 40 (POEM)

Wake this morning and you remember

how love comes back like seasons.

Now, blood and life pulse

through you knowing where to turn

and beside you lies the woman you still need

more than you ever feared. She sleeps

while you worry about things like blood,

how it stops one day like a train

out of track, potent, but no place left

to go and you want to nudge her

and talk about your kids

who sit tranced before cartoons where the fallen

rise to music but you let her sleep

and go on sighing in some dream

she won’t remember past toothpaste

just as you forgot why

you’re sitting up so anxious about everything

when spring breathes in your window,

and you swear the breeze whistles

like your best friend when you were ten

who’d wait on your porch with an oiled glove,

a brand-new ball, and all the time in the world.