Page 7

The Tri-Color Beech in Four Parts

- Gordon Faylor 

I.                                                                                                                                                                             
Late-day
   
robin resting
beneath its congress                   
        sweeping grass   drag brother chine       
an affiliate it seems kin                           
        filial to kitchen window
         
warbling     no, resting
beech quotidian and dim
grass swept around

there is a newly-built house behind the tree
    odd
    it has a turret
    their driveway is situated
    just next to the tree, so while
    interaction my
    gerund
   
    neighbors blend
    respiratory.
   
           Allentown
late-day June robin chirps

                                                                                                                              Infect 2 - Suzi Sadler
monism slathers his argot
  today what is said except “O red chest O grey lath”

 
sitting in
kitchen there is the window
slats that          sunlight narrows on the kitchen table

    we three
    growing near no sea
    closest being
    the Lehigh river
    with its ruddy lee

there to singe it seems
            the shore
            and beech        lee
            beech. 

II.

                Tone-line clocks
        gnaw mouth and house             frayed they
                 tilting I       with spoke and tint
        sputtering unto this one thing or blossom,
                            Thee they jut, now in dark.

        Mines they gleam start calvary
                       Clefting their rocky depths
        Chests above one another then          into each steel

        Nisky Hill Graveyard, not of building I thought
            Groundswell inlaid pineground sought—
 
 
 

Anthropology - Peter Schwartz                       
 
III.

Into communion mill dusky and jangling
     Or aft by vale Atlantic, river or skirting main
         Aloft unsaid brine tips repeat of wing      trove
    by beak black-eyed against sunset,
                       (which presents a hawser for marsh plump nesting robin)

“The car engine looks like—”                 
what speech prevail, with mortar ascent 
brawn-fraught rows of Bethlehem Steel  
                                  (now a sort of convent) where (prowess in non-engine hour)—   
    Steeps and brink of chimney yards
    should be where the casino starts.
    
            Saw-beak cleaver, to patterned corpus
                                                    game                      plume gesture.  Unseen hub within this stone,
    clipped from him                      
Lehigh loom.                        

Flock back                                       
            All hopping down the lawn and eating
                    earthworms and watching water lurk where
 
Around this lawn’s stone               
 eclipse the grass                          
Into it                     water            
Nine beaks dipped:                    

                                                                     Grim as hawk the father
                                                                                        woodbine O the vessel flapping,
                                                                                       worm in red as ember same as
                                                                                     blood in beak or with this leaf
                                                                                                  which will turn as well white and green

                                                                         or rotund out unturn
                                                                          one of such unctuous
                                                                           beechnut they ingest.


                                                                                IV.

                                                        I don’t                             remember dad
                                                        planting our                     beech but
                                                        earlier this                       summer beech
                                                        served my                       own means
                                                        and became                    poetic material.

                                                        Months ago                      I wrote
                                                        a poem                           that read,
                                                        “latent deershapes           lost in
                                                        yaw red                          penumbral breath”
                                                        and with                         gusto thought
       

                                                        Perform, branch              Perform, branch







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