Welcome to “Poetry at The Arts Fuse.” A new poem every Thursday

Golden Shovel
                             After Robert Creeley’s “The Rhyme”

September is always there
The pain won’t lift, is
thus equal to these dry leaves, the
likely sign
something is afoot in shallow light of
entropy, the
diminishing flower,
just now resplendent to
the eye to borrow
a phrase alleviating the
seen theme

aloneness, but
you cannot make up what
one could think or
how to navigate where
there might be fragrance to
gentle through, lie down, or recover
from the lot, what
this silk sleeve is
certainly not
equal to love
that rises too
far and simply.

Before waking I
dreamed I saw
a shroud of her
waving in the fog, and
memory fell behind.
I wanted her
few syllables there
repeated what were
constant flowers
before the fallen petals, and
the shadow of violets behind
her and them,
that pure logic of nothing.

Sheila E. Murphy. A Pushcart-nominated poet, recent appearances include Gargoyle, Poetry Bay, Poetry, Black Sun Lit, Lana Turner, Seam Allowance, Poetose, Volta, and others. Newest book publications are I Want to Be Your Radio (Unlikely Books, 2025), Escritoire (Lavender Ink, 2025), and Permission to Relax (BlazeVOX Books, 2023). Recently performed at Piper Writers Center Arizona State University and the New Orleans Poetry Festival. Won the Gertrude Stein Poetry Award for Letters to Unfinished J. (Green Integer Press, 2003) and the Hay(ha)ku Book Prize for Reporting Live From You Know Where (Meritage Press, 2018). She lives in Phoenix, Arizona.

Note: Hey poets! We seek submissions of excellent poetry from across the length and breadth of contemporary poetics. See submission guidelines here. The arbiter of the feature is the magazine’s poetry editor, John Mulrooney.

— Arts Fuse editor Bill Marx