March 2018
Poetry is a lonely business, but I have a friend who plays guitar, and when I play bass with him, I find community. My most recent book is In This Place: Selected Poems 1982-2013 and I've had recent poems in Hummingbird, Atticus Review, Hamilton Stone Review, and other literary magazines. I'm honored to serve as managing editor of the Lorine Niedecker Monograph Series, What Region? I blog as The Middlewesterner (www.middlewesterner.com), and have put up at least five little poems a week since mid-2008.
THIS MOMENT
Morning light
coming in over
my shoulder.
Somehow the sun
moves its track
towards solstice.
In this perfect
place, it shines
like promise.
Nothing else
means so much.
THE POET'S LONGING
Is it a sin to love longing
too much, to take the unyielding
pain of emptiness as
one's habitation? What poet
wants to die alone? Why doesn't
he find what he's been looking for?
His sadness is never finished,
merely abandoned. Then he goes
on to what comes next, to silence,
where darkness consumes his losses.
LEAPING THE DISTANCE
How we need to reach that
far star, to leap the great
black distance between this
mudball earth and our sun's
trim twin out there somewhere.
Oh, how we need to know
we are not alone in
this empty vastness; how
we need to find others
whom we can greet and call
neighbor, companion, friend.
SNOWY OWL,
slider of sky,
you've come
this far south
to mark mid-
winter
Wisconsin.
You perch here
on your
pole; your eyes
sweep east and
west. The
light on this
snow is your
light, long
and low and
hard in the
heart where
hunger is.
ANOTHER WINTER TABLEAU
Sudden sad green in
winter freeze. Grey sky
and its lean wind.
I could stand here
a million years
waiting. Wisdom
doesn't hurry
in any case, except
to teach us patience.
THIS MOMENT
Morning light
coming in over
my shoulder.
Somehow the sun
moves its track
towards solstice.
In this perfect
place, it shines
like promise.
Nothing else
means so much.
THE POET'S LONGING
Is it a sin to love longing
too much, to take the unyielding
pain of emptiness as
one's habitation? What poet
wants to die alone? Why doesn't
he find what he's been looking for?
His sadness is never finished,
merely abandoned. Then he goes
on to what comes next, to silence,
where darkness consumes his losses.
LEAPING THE DISTANCE
How we need to reach that
far star, to leap the great
black distance between this
mudball earth and our sun's
trim twin out there somewhere.
Oh, how we need to know
we are not alone in
this empty vastness; how
we need to find others
whom we can greet and call
neighbor, companion, friend.
SNOWY OWL,
slider of sky,
you've come
this far south
to mark mid-
winter
Wisconsin.
You perch here
on your
pole; your eyes
sweep east and
west. The
light on this
snow is your
light, long
and low and
hard in the
heart where
hunger is.
ANOTHER WINTER TABLEAU
Sudden sad green in
winter freeze. Grey sky
and its lean wind.
I could stand here
a million years
waiting. Wisdom
doesn't hurry
in any case, except
to teach us patience.
© 2018 Tom Montag
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -FF