SAM MAGAVERN
King David's Psalms
He sang them in the ornate suite,
As Bathsheba brushed her hair. Or
Strolled through the royal woods,
To hear them in the open air.
Once-it's told-he went incognito,
And performed at a Philistine
Fair. But it didn't matter where.
He wished Jonathan were there.
C.
DALE YOUNG
New Year's Day
Line of the horizon, blank book of distance–
yours is the hiss of memory, the small
school of puffins studying the tide's notebooks,
its loose leaf papers spilling at our feet.
What grows mighty from such nourishment?
Lessons left in sand, left in Winter?
There is a new language, a new year
translated here before our eyes.
And the year behind us, the year
of silence and more silence, will its discontent
ever be filtered through this sand,
return to us, unrecognizable, in a new tide?
School of puffins, academy of the small
and small-minded, out of nothing you bring
recollections terrible in their minute details . ...
If
drinking is bitter, then change yourself to wine.
