Isabel Kestner

Horizons


Back home his horizon
was a wide open promise
of possibility.

But here he cannot even see
where the sun settles behind
the earth.

Here is concrete hundreds
of feet high, here are nights
brighter than days, here
smog and soot hide the sky.

He presses on in the
day-less city earning fair wages
most of which he sends home

where it pays for medicines
and food so his children will
survive watching the wide
open beautiful horizon.

Isabel Kestner is a poet and writer who spent half her life in New Jersey and half in Virginia, making her an odd blend of Southern Woman and Jersey Girl.  Her poems have appeared in numerous publications since the age of seventeen.  Her first collection of poetry, Strange Things She Heard, was released in December 2009.  Her forthcoming second collection, Just Close Your Eyes and Write…100 Poems in 100 Hours, chronicles the poetry and process of writing 100 poems in just 100 hours.