He weighs the world in feathers
hangs nickel moons from a sill
and measures love
tooth-by-tooth in a smile.
He haunts that turnstile place
where four fine candles spire above the ice
to first illumine beyond his wishful breath,
where pioneer steps outpace
our dated anecdotes.
Stories become his own,
and he claims the lonely avatar
who wears his face in the mirror.
Drifting within the dreaded
estuaries of his becoming,
he is now more fresh than brackish
and he owns a lifetime
in which to forget it all.
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More About
R. L. Kurtz
R. L. Kurtz is a published poet, essayist, and English teacher who has traveled abroad extensively, teaching in such places as Riyadh, Barcelona, Bahrain, and Taipei. His poem Star Sapphire has been nominated for the 2010 Pushcart Prize and can be found in the journal Splash of Red. R. L. Kurtz is currently the director of an English Language school in Taiwan where he resides with his wife and two children. He has degrees in both English and Philosophy and received his Masters in literature in ’98.
Dear Rich, went there, love the poem especially
“…and measures love /
tooth-by-tooth in a smile” (so human)
“where pioneer steps outpace / our dated anecdotes”
And then the “lonely avatar” &c.
…though I got there first with that great word, did I not?!
This, seriously, is very evocative and humane throughout. What I particularly like and appreciate here, in contrast with most of the gibberish stuff in Lulu, is the intensely personal experience but without the ubiquitously horrible ‘I’/’me’ (I’d like it even more if in the last four lines you would have
estuaries of becoming,
now more fresh than brackish
owning a lifetime
in which to forget it all.
…so that it generalises, just as it appeals, to all parental humanity.
But great stuff nonetheless,
Best,
Lindsay