Poets’ Corner
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Book Review: “Wading through Lethe”
Wading through Lethe. By Paulette Guerin. Athens, GA: FutureCycle Press, 2022. 84 pp. $15.95 (paper). Greek mythology held that the waters of five distinct rivers ran through the bowels of the underworld. That Paulette Guerin has chosen as her theme the river of Lethe—forgetfulness— illustrates how pervasive has been the Christianization of paganism in the…
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Exhibition
I learn there is to be a rare display of planets ordered in the summer sky, so off I go before the start of day in hope of seeing such a sight nearby. I come to where I view the crescent Moon with Venus to the left and Jupiter off right, but since the Sun…
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Spark
Glow, gentle canticle, in the endless ether— ring radiant across the radius of curse, flow faster than lashes, ride with rigid grasp. The hollows gape and holler as you flash in the shallows, a holy sheen holding steady— they didn’t know about you and the new brine we breathe.
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Down, Down
Let’s toss aside our fishy preoccupation with historicity. Let’s say they sunk him into text to type our slow descent to self, into an empty belly intent for Tarshish, which is a fancy way to say really far away. His then is our slow awakening that these, our lodgings, are something less than satisfactory. His…
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Februarys
When I am tempest-torn and grief-lorn, shredded by the weight of my own self against the spider-silk weft of this heavy world; when I lose my nerve or head and begin to bargain with castles I have built – offer them more grit, more stone, more water, argue they are not porcelain; when I look…
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Meditation on West Maroon Pass
10,432 feet I reach the miner’s ruined cabin, Each year more like a stack of weathered timber Sinking from sight in the grass. Around the bend, the scene: Alpine Whiproot arcs from green, gentians spear The sun, and, above me, the pass. Here dwarf hawksbeard still lurks and sparks. Lilies and bluebells burn, where willow…
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June, Henry County
In the dead afternoon, June’s hands meet the water, submerging each dish and raising it clean. The children are at school. Nothing breathes, not even the curtains stir. Through the window, June watches The ancient mare and wonders if she remembers That stallion who, years ago, sired The spring foal. Perhaps the old horse too…
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Dawn in the Fall of My Thirtieth Year
And through Tudor windows opens antique timbre— old-forge steel, tempered and flank-fitted for war horses, makes seize-music on meat-pistons that mean plunder: As if. ………For I know a construction truck’s shuddering out its raised dumper, and the sun is a vinegar sponge. And You slowly thumb up Your pure pressure. Let me will to possess…
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Freude: On Hearing Beethoven’s 9th Symphony after a Two-Year Pandemic Delay
The master couldn’t hear his work, but here we are listening together— where the flowing waters meet— to Beethoven’s final symphony. The contrasts and crescendos at times too much: a smile releases the mind’s discomfiture. The trumpet player drinks some water, waiting for his chance, the ringing choir is a morose tribunal peering down on…
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Tyndale
Your words, six hundred years old, fill our minds: my brother’s keeper and let there be light, it came to pass and seek and ye shall find, plain-put so in faith we’ll fight the good fight. What’s that you said? The boy who drives the plow should know more of the scriptures than a priest?…