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April
peepers are risen
in quizzical sleigh bell sounds
resurgent life springs
raindrop explosions
splash in concentric circles
insatiable thirst
trout yanked into air
play a line and lure lotto
opening day’s crowd
tree flowers dangle
scattering gold-green pollen
fairy sex-dust floats
A couple blocks from my home, the Farmington River is the largest tributary of the Connecticut.From Tinker's Damn, Homebound Publications, 2013,http://homeboundpublications.com/store/books/tinkers-damn/
The biggest book I’ve ever seen! A breathtaking 26 by 39 inches! John James Audubon’s Birds of America is one of history’s most audacious acts of publishing. Produced in the 1830s with 435 color engravings in four volumes, only 119 copies are known to exist. In 2014, Forbes named it one of the top ten most expensive books ever sold at $12.6 million. Incredibly, there’s a copy at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, less than twenty miles from home. In the hushed reading room of the Watkinson Library, where a page is turned each week to display yet another avian marvel, my wife Mary and I gazed in raptured awe at a pair of dusky zenaida doves so vivid that I thought I heard them cooing.
Continue reading "With John James Audubon for His Birthday" »
Caught short in a statue’s shadow of awe—I gaze at bone
and flesh frozen in stone. In dappled slants of light
beneath the Portland museum dome stands the regal
but rejected Grant. Intended for the Capitol rotunda,
he’s here like a fighting man exiled to a desk.
Returned by a committee of Congress, some say this general
was too plump, not martial enough with his sword atop
a pedestal, olive branch at its base. Sculptor Simmons
crafted a fraternal twin figure for the genuflection
of senators, a fiercer face, hand on his blade’s hilt.
We expect perfection in marble lacking in a man,
defying history, friends’ insight and the heart’s
knowledge of life just to bask in an alabaster glow,
demanding only heroism of our heroes,
pilfering the dignity of imperfection. Praying for peace,
we worship conquest over healing. Carved in a dove’s
color, this rebuffed Grant remembers his grandest victory
was grace in refusing the vanquished’s weapon.
Seeming relaxed, leaning one arm against the pillar,
the other vaguely reaches for a cigar.
