Grace
Mountains underlining centrifugal nights
sundowns streaked cerise
as the sashes of cardinals a script
First the arm pivots from the elbow
producing a natural slant
an arc like that of a windshield wiper
I was just learning
Now I pivot from the wrist
and hold the pen like Japanese brushwork
Nature is so inconceivably more
than the relentlessly simple minded concepts
of deities Grace
is simply the brush lifting to make a leaf
Keeping Up
Today was gone fast as we had it
The past being constructed behind us
Some progress when a face in a circle became a moon
A few happy categories then the sour puss analysis
It’s a wonder we haven’t burst into flames
from hurry though by evening even tired light can’t quite
make it to the far wall Maybe we need another moon
I am so far behind these letters and so deep
in a small yard miles away There is a great pile
of dead limbs between us and I am hauling the bodies
ALLAN PETERSON‘s recent books are: Other Than They Seem, winner of the Snowbound Chapbook Prize from Tupelo Press; Precarious, 42 Miles Press, a finalist for The Lascaux Prize; Fragile Acts, McSweeney’s Poetry Series, a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle and Oregon Book Awards. A visual artist as well as a poet, he lives in Ashland, Oregon and Gulf Beeze, Florida.
Twyckenham Notes 