Summer’s Skies
Fourth of July, 2017
[Front 1]
in praise of summer’s
skies late afternoon sonic
booms the burnished green
an acrid smell, the cart urged
toward tee off at the last hole
on foot they wander
freshly-mown grass, Katzian
forms in the suburbs
lamp light a figure inside
startled awake drawing blinds
[Front 2]
the moon’s a whisper
as the evening settles in
scarecrow my shadow
first frost on the grass and my
love gone, a tongueless bell gong
—same time next year
an Indian summer and
new crops of kisses
Auntie Em fixing meringues
those low bake slow bake cookies
the Shepherd’s subdued
pleas until its master turns
slaps his thigh, come here!
look! we have come through! (Lawrence)
the dog’s sage old friend might say
[Back 1]
Lola (the white neighbor-
hood cat) spends her ninth life
pawing winter’s grass
barely visible on snow
still falling under a blue moon
and the seasons turn
over like tossed coins, and we
go aimlessly on . . .
in coat pockets, hands repose—
first light draws the horizon
Venice beautiful
decay and us gondolaed
inside the lagoon
leaning in close gate pitcher
window together, we said
[Back 2]
how quiet it was
just now the air unruffled
for a while away
green’s ever effusion, the
annual dependable
cantare, the wave
of blossoms moving north greets
the birds lighting south
and yet so brief the lilac
blooms, so poignant, so redolent
They Blaze Brown
Autumnal Equinox, 2017
[Front 1]
swoon the chilled air, the
harvest moon, the flaming leaves
as they blaze brown fall
gathering acorns, the squirrel
coming & going, the wind
the wind blowing the
busyness of burrowing
of hunkering down
what I’ve left on my small desk
bank teller’s lamp, a framed sketch
[Front 2]
broken and double-
yellow lines & the shoulder—
& nowhere but here
on the black ribbon of road
you’re everywhere, yet nowhere
I called his number
needing still to hear his voice—
Please leave a message
a hollow, bottomless hole
without sound he is gone
sandbar & current
& on the pond’s surface turns
a wheel of snow
cold walk on a black night—(no
streetlights) a foghorn’s low moan
[Back 1]
just keep moving “move-
ment is health” put that in your
peace pipe and smoke it
you could fold, say, a bad hand
clean clothes, a letter, your hands
look at the faces,
she said, of those who’ve chosen
to stay together
sinking chin deep, just knees kiss,
the river become a shared skin
summer night, every-
where water, full moon shimmering
clothing optional
glitter lying about us,
a dream land so various
[Back 2]
here, now, sit awhile
have a cup of tea, savor
that fugitive, heat
coffee, toast, kippers, marma-
lade window: spinning dogwoods
we call this pattern
pineapple blossom wind grazed
on the line, it waves
spring, yes, is finally (we
thought it might never come) here
Black Winter
Winter Solstice, 2017
Allover white
with bold swaths of black winter
road or a Franz Kline?
A newspaper, read, you see
cold neighbors, cast on the skids
their faces, like leaf-
lets fill streets and minds with that
feathery thing—hope
High-pressure system building—
indeed, a change of weather
* * *
Tonight the glitter
of stars will contend with the
hunter’s moon, rising
but autumn, my love, is just
a frozen memory now
in this photo behind
me, the gingko’s leaves falling—
one two Imyourfan!
My cyanotype, and your
native gold—a live Vermeer!
Irresistible
that familiar aroma
of old books, savored
pages turned on a life not
yet lived—goodbye to all that
* * *
Another time, a
fine summer’s, days and faces
pass, fade facades fall
The moon breaks through cloud cover
the lush grass yields back your voice
It was, after all,
your favorite season, so
here we are once more
Tell me what I like, you say,
poring over the menu—
Everything is
red!—the wine, the strawberries
your (sensuous) lips
In silhouette a rambler
(he’s acquainted with the night)
* * *
Walking inside a
dark so deep so long the miles
leading, surely, toward dawn
a stealth coyote, under
the streetlight up the back stairs
knocking, but lightly—
slipping into the cherry’s
ample blossoms, mist
wild life dogwoods and barking
the greening shimmering leaves
Robin Lippincott is the author, most recently, of Blue Territory: A Meditation on the Life and Art of Joan Mitchell, and Rufus + Syd, a YA novel co-written with Julia Watts. He has also published the novels In the Meantime, Our Arcadia, and Mr. Dalloway, as well as a short story collection, The ‘I’ Rejected. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Paris Review, Fence, American Short Fiction, Provincetown Arts, The Louisville Review, and many other journals, and his fiction has been anthologized in Unbroken Circle: Stories of Cultural Diversity in the South, M2M: New Literary Fiction, and Rebel Yell. For ten years he reviewed art and photography books for The New York Times Book Review. He has received fellowships from Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. He teaches in Spalding's MFA in Writing Program, and lives in the Boston area.
Debra Kang Dean is the author of News of Home and Precipitates, both from BOA Editions, and two prize-winning chapbooks, Back to Back and Fugitive Blues. A third chapbook, Morning’s Spell, is comprised of renku written with Russ Kesler. Her poems have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and The Writer’s Almanac, and her essays have appeared in the expanded edition of The Colors of Nature: Culture, Identity, and the Natural World and in Until Everything Is Continuous Again: American Poets on the Recent Work of W. S. Merwin. Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in One, The Ghazal Page (a collaborative ghazal sequence written with Greg Pape), Moon City Review, and The CDC Poetry Project. Totem: America, a full-length collection of poems, is forthcoming from Tiger Bark Press in 2018. She currently lives in Bloomington, Indiana, and is on the faculty of Spalding University’s low-residency MFA in Writing Program.