Poem Renaissance – Bill Schreiber

Gyroscope Review is celebrating National Poetry Month with a Poem Renaissance, a review of previously published poems looking for new life and new views. Every day through May 20^th, a new poem to fall in love with all over again.

The Distance to Lost, Counting the Found
by Bill Schreiber

The real story isn’t mine.
It is a closet’s lost back shelf
wasps swirling above dust-covered boxes in an attic
the half-seen dim spillage
of memory that limns him
against my lost.

A younger me breathes my air
dislikes young children
skis mountains no one should
loves another who isn’t my wife.

Each year stays gone
rolls like pennies down the slide of my shoulder’s slant
under furniture and between floorboards
some found while others wait still.

I am a distance
what I was to what I am
here to the burn of far forests I cannot see
a span to horizons only he knows.
What is spared imminent immolation
defines one small room’s corner
makes the bed
smooths the sheets
fluffs a pillow to fit my head.

Each still may find what is lost
or lose what was found
as we sleep in motels
separated by eight lane interstates
the same cars and trucks roaring by all night
as each wakes late and alone to breakfast at noon
drinks that first coffee for the day.

I only see I become, and he recedes.
Our frugal past turned
off the lights behind us
as I found the curve of an old love’s neck on a pillow
the smell of soil turned with a spade
a favorite sweater’s rough wool.

This poem was published in The Poet's Touchstone, Volume 64, Winter 2022-2023.

Bill Schreiber has been a Hyla Brook Poet since 2018. Bill has been published in Aerial Perspective, Assignment Literary Magazine, Broadkill Review, Gyroscope Review, Shot Glass Journal, The Poets Touchstone, and Metonym Journal. Bill works in the technology field and lives with his wife and son in southern New Hampshire.

Don’t forget to read the Spring 2025 Issue, available now, online and in print

Previous Renaissance Poets

April Poets

May Poets