December 2018
Robert Knox
rc.knox2@gmail.com
rc.knox2@gmail.com
Bionote: I'm the author of two chapbooks. "Gardeners Do It With Their Hands Dirty" has been nominated for a Massachusetts Book Award for best books published in 2017."Cocktails in the Wild" was published earlier this year. I'm also the author of "Suosso's Lane," a novel of the Sacco-Vanzetti case. The poems in this issue follow a recent autumnal stay in the Berkshires, a pleasure my wife and I have enjoyed for decades.
The Beaver Marsh
The beavers have chewed the landscape into wetland
Cattails along the edge, marsh grass within
The masts of dead trees shrink into primeval ooze
Birds nest in the margins
hunt in the shallows
This landscape, this point of view we would never have,
all things considered --
some trees lost, land value down --
but that the lives of the beaver ran through it.
The beavers have chewed the landscape into wetland
Cattails along the edge, marsh grass within
The masts of dead trees shrink into primeval ooze
Birds nest in the margins
hunt in the shallows
This landscape, this point of view we would never have,
all things considered --
some trees lost, land value down --
but that the lives of the beaver ran through it.
One Side of the Causeway
The water sits high on the causeway spillover
Whose 'cause' is it?
Did I give it a yes on last week's ballot?
The wind blows me down the road,
the Heights on my right, the water on my left
Don't rush me, Aeolus, the Phragmites will wait
as long as it takes
and a few millennia more
Red-winged blackbirds flash here in the spring
Fishermen lured in summer, pickup trucks on the verge
Me agape for cruel October sunsets, year after year,
till the wind reminds me how soft I am
Edges
Old Tom lives in that tiny old place
looking like it was born by fairies
from a sigh in an emerald field
The only thing of human handiwork to break the plane
and speak of another kind of life,
beside the hovering, rooting, down-to-earth hug
of countless silent others
Maybe they know something he doesn’t
Old Tom lives in that tiny old place
looking like it was born by fairies
from a sigh in an emerald field
The only thing of human handiwork to break the plane
and speak of another kind of life,
beside the hovering, rooting, down-to-earth hug
of countless silent others
Maybe they know something he doesn’t
Remembering Power
Water running hard along The River Walk in Great Barrington
Rapids surge and counter flow
in the stream where the first new lights of the gods of power
illuminated the town
and Stanley's A/C defeated Edison's D/C
Untapped now, the current still runs hard
powered only by the autumn rains
Water running hard along The River Walk in Great Barrington
Rapids surge and counter flow
in the stream where the first new lights of the gods of power
illuminated the town
and Stanley's A/C defeated Edison's D/C
Untapped now, the current still runs hard
powered only by the autumn rains
Day's End
Way too soon
the season gilds, then bares its heart of wood
In the afternoon light
I forage for kindling among the
broken limbs left behind
by the woodcutter
after the storm of another season took down the king
of this mini-realm
More light for everyone else
Pierce Pond
In the midst of things a time of reflections
A golden-cold morning in the nature preserve where the birds
have largely slipped away,
having weighed the consequences of staring into winter's face
more seriously than those of us
who slip indoors and burn what the ax-man left behind.
The buoyant element remains
The silvery slivers, the golden stalks, the evergreens
all bend to face the blue waters
and gaze upon the shape of things
Under Mountain Road
Along the road that runs beneath the mountain
dividing the lowlands from the hills,
all one glorious tear in nature's master work of splash and splendor,
the local saints of wood and stream have cut a path
not through, but just above the wetlands, a master plan
of yellow pine that lifts us closer to the trees,
nearer to the light,
and well above the kiss of the blue plane beneath our dry,
though chilly feet
as we gaze upon the wetland bog
that mingles with the grasses and grows
both bird and fish
They tell me eagles nest there.
© 2018 Robert Knox
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