Blackbird Archive
← v18n2, Fall 2019
Poetry · Volume 18, Number 2

Shadow

Adam Chiles

In the dream last night, my father

rose from his chair and walked toward me.

How trim he looked, the weight he’d carried

near the end, gone. He pointed to the water

pooling at the carpet’s edge, explained

the necessities of plumbing; the pipes

burst from aging. Even the ceiling,

an intricate stain mapping the rain’s

abiding passage. The last time

I saw him, he and my mother waved as they

pulled away, car windows down, late summer

and the soft chill: a shadow already burning

on the underside of morning.

grieffamilydream
Adam Chiles

Adam Chiles’s first collection of poems, Evening Land, has just been released in the UK by Cinnamon Press. His work has been anthologized in Best New Poets 2007 (Samovar) and Best New Poets 2006 (University of Virginia Press), and has appeared in such journals as Barrow Street , Beloit Poetry Journal , Cimarron Review , Gulf Coast , Indiana Review, and Painted Bride Quarterly . He is the recipient of scholarships and grants from the Banff School of Fine Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Canada Council, and the Gilman School in Baltimore, where he was the 2003–2004 Reginald S. Tickner Writing Fellow. Adam currently lives just outside of Washington, DC, and teaches English and creative writing at Northern Virginia Community College.