Outskirts

The world closes in
And what lies approximate
An Indigo Bunting
A Baltimore Oriole
Orange rouge for the breast.
Spring is handsome
At the foot of a high hill
A green monument
Of shade, seed
And swarming, upward grass.
The elegant air of May
All turquoise overhead
Your back to the
Edge and undertow of a city
Your back to a Western sun.

May 15, 2002

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Biography

I teach 6th grade in Newark, Ohio. I am 49, and have a wife and three children. Some of the poets that I most appreciate are Milosz, Herbert, Montale, and Akhmatova. Irish poets are Kavanaugh, Boland, McGuckian. Newark is a small city, about 50,000 which is heavy industry, thus blue collar, and poor by U.S. standards, two rivers the Licking and Raccoon flow through and ancient giant geometrical Indian mounds have survived years of development, roads, canals, railroads. The mounds once covered the whole of the area. We are still blessed with beautiful rural areas throughout the county, at least to the east, north, and south. To the west is Columbus in process of building the largest mall in the world."