"These poems are the waves emanating from the gravitational fall of my runs by the Eno river," writes James Applewhite, "and other travels, into a self I could not otherwise know. They are my repetitive song of belief in the possibility of presence in language."

From "Observing the Sun":

On a bank overlooking the Eno,

I feel us as lightly aligned

As heads of the Queen Anne's lace,

Their congregation of angles.

Red sun, dilated, has us all

In its sights.

Against its horizon,

I spread my arms like a road sign

To...