The Everlasting Self

Comes in from a downpour

Shaking water in every direction––

A collaborative condition:

Gathered, shed, spread, then

Forgotten, reabsorbed. Like love

From a lifetime ago, and mud

A dog has tracked across the floor.


“The Everlasting Self” by Tracy K. Smith from Such Color: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 2021 by Tracy K. Smith. Reprinted by permission of The Permission Company LLC, on behalf of Graywolf Press, www.graywolfpress.org. This poem appeared in the Poetry Society of America's Poems on Wheels program.