SageGreenJournal.org
voices out of the West, mostly poetry, personal to planetary
Frank Coons
Colorado
Frank is a poet and veterinarian splitting his time between Denver and the western slope of Colorado. His work has appeared in the Santa Fe Literary Review, Eleventh Muse, El Malpais, Pinyon Review, Fruita Pulp, Imprints, and elsewhere. He was a finalist for the Mark Fisher poetry prize in 2011 and 2013. His first chapbook, Finding Casseiopeia, was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award in 2013. His second collection of poems,
Counting in Dog Years, has recently been released. Both books been published by Lithic Press.
two poems by Frank Coons
Eclogue
Out my window,
a thousand windows look back,
everywhere mirrors mirroring
mirrors in a mockery of eternity.
Yes, there is grass delineated
by planners whose concepts
are concrete, whose hearts
are dynamos, whose blood
is storm water flowing through
culverts, whose ten-year plans
are proverbs.
A crabapple tree unfolds, reaching
the second story and believes
it is god or at least an angel.
It defies right angles and blooms
a thousand pink stars to shower
the workers walking their geometries.
But I have known the glorious
anarchy of the wild
and smelled its adrenaline,
felt the five-hundred-year-old bark
of the Krummholz pine, heard
the persistent wants of life,
where night, if lit at all, was by a moon
yellowing full. It cleanses
and envelopes me.
Yet, I will not discredit community,
where ideation sprouts like
milkweed in the fields of opportunity,
nor deny that it is the wellspring
of our heritage.We are social animals.
So, I admit to torn gratitudes,
and this poor eclogue, forever split
between the here and the there of it.
Commanding the Craft
I will not seek to out-oblique
old T.S. Elliot
or speak too long of Ostriker’s
dogs and tulips.
Equally lost on me are the end
rhymes of Frost or X.J. Kennedy.
Even if I knew what Rae Armantrout
was talking about,
I could not duplicate it.
Nor am I schooled enough in vulgarity
to compete with Dr. Ginsberg
and, though I once did, Ms. Millay,
(may I call you Saint?), I’m too old
now to feel what you did then.
I would gladly sail to Byzantium
with W.B., but could not command
his craft, which leaves me
all alone with my notebook,
a pen, my empty raft.