Emerald Acres                                                 

Rough field of sunglaze

on muting glass,

each pane half opaque

and cradling light,

twenty acres of greenhouse glowing

in the sun, abandoned now

a year or more,

an angular architecture

neither green

nor housing anything,

though light takes up residence

on bright days or overcast,

on moonlit nights or star-pricked.

An armor

for the humid air,

full of gaps

where kids have stoned out the panes.

No protection,

but an appearance.

Twenty acres of ruin,

a slowly failing house

—but a house nonetheless—

for an idea about beauty.

First appeared in 32 poems

Luke Hankins is the author of a collection of poems, Weak Devotions, and a collection of essays, The Work of Creation: Selected Prose. He is the editor of Poems of Devotion: An Anthology of Recent Poets, and a collection of his translations from the French of Stella Vinitchi Radulescu, “A Cry in the Snow & Other Poems,” is forthcoming from Seagull Books. Hankins is the founder and editor of Orison Books, a non-profit literary press focused on the life of the spirit from a broad and inclusive range of perspectives.

On why poetry matters: “Poetry has the power to make us feel more deeply, more often. We change for the better that way”