[ Bio ]
By now you know the moment it begins:
air charged with static and the threat of storm,
a wind sees through you, and you put your world
on hold. Circle the block, let the groceries grow
warm before the snap of the first words.
Or take one more cup of coffee
before work, rest one more moment amid
the recalled murmur of friends assembled
in any of summer’s fiery idylls.
You court love’s fleetingness,
scatter last seed for its sparrows
which would otherwise lift, feathers
worrying your chest, their ascent
the inevitable flight of affection.
Watch them, imagine their claws
gripping the pulpy muscle of your heart—
their flight thickens with you, and your eyes
roll back into the lemony light of lost days,
to your familiar fields of poppies infinite in pink.
I am a former garden designer and professional nurseryman. My poems appear widely, and I have new work in Missouri Review, Inkwell, Crab Orchard Review, Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, Chautauqua Literary Journal, and other places. I also write fiction, with work in Georgia Review, New Letters, Ascent, Other Voices, and elsewhere. I am a 2003 recipient of a Pennsylvania Arts Council Individual Artists Fellowship for Fiction, and in 2002 I was the inaugural Thoreau Poet in Residence at the Toledo Botanical Garden, an award given by the Garden and the editors of Mid-American Review.
Copyright 2005 Gabriel Welsch. Do not reproduce without permission.