The Downstairs Press

Poetry

the blessing of winter rain

Territorial Press • Moorhead, MN • 1976
out of print / limited copies available from author

The poet and editor, Mark Vinz, was instrumental in encouraging me to write poetry.  Eventually our poet/editor relationship evolved into a strong and lasting friendship which continues to this day.  Mark’s small chapbook of my early poems is part of a series of midwestern poets chapbooks Vinz published in the seventies and eighties.  Unlike my later books of poetry which are, indeed, books more than  collections of poems, blessing is simply a gathering of my better (albeit novice) early work.

ANDREW TALKS TO GULLS

standing on a string of grey rocks
reaching out into the clear water
andrew talks to gulls

his voice   sliding through octave cries
light a time   lifts in clouds of gulls
and draws their tiny black eyes

he thinks those pure white birds come
out of the sky and across years of water
for the pieces of bread he scatters to them

i know the sun dancing on their yellow beaks
is in honor of this small boy
whose voice remembers

he too   once wore
white feathers