"Regime" by Carl Phillips

Regime

As I took off
my clothes, I
watched him taking

his own off. The sound 
of rain was for
once not the sound

of wind shaking
the rain steadily loose
from a stand

of river birch. It’s hard			
to believe in them,
the beautiful colors

of extinction; but
these are the colors.



Originally published in POETRY (Nov. 2022); Appears in Scattered Snows, To The North (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024)

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Carl Phillips is the author of many books of poetry, most recently Scattered Snows, to the North. He lives in Massachusetts.