Sydney Lea
Summer 2025 | Poetry
Influenza
The odd auburn blush the headlights showed
looked softer than normal beams,
like sunlight through smog.
Was all he beheld a product of fever?
Did that low shine move these rabbits and deer
to be fearless, dashing from brush to the road
as if to soak up the glow,
which he wished didn’t look so eerie?
He drove dogtrot-slow. He knew his reactions
were dull as his thinking. He tried not to picture
striking a deer or even a rabbit,
the idea of hefting such weight
overwhelming. Where was he going again?
He couldn’t say why he believed
he was due to offer atonement.
His window was open, the night was cool,
yet the landscape had that coal-oven shimmer.
All this had to be about heat,
and not his own alone.
He thought again of a hot daytime sun,
how it would singe
a roadside carcass black– the relentless
sun at full blaze nearly silver,
like the metal cast for lethal weapons.
Sydney Lea is a Pulitzer finalist in poetry, founder of New England Review, Vermont Poet Laureate (2011-15), and recipient of his state’s highest artistic distinction, the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. He has published two novels (most recently Now Look), eight volumes of personal essays (most recently, Such Dancing as We Can), and sixteen poetry collections (most recently What Shines). His new and selected poems is due in 2026.