David Wolf is the author of seven collections of poetry, Open Season, The Moment Forever, Sablier I, Sablier II, Visions (with artist David Richmond), Weir (a micro-chapbook from Origami Poems Project), and Seven. His work has appeared in numerous literary magazines and journals, including BlazeVOX, Cleaver Magazine, dadakuku, decomp, E·ratio, Exacting Clam, Indefinite Space, Lotus-eater Magazine, New York Quarterly, Otoliths, River Styx Magazine, Transom, and Utriculi. He is a professor emeritus of English at Simpson College and serves as the poetry editor for Janus Head: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Continental Philosophy, Phenomenological Psychology, and the Arts.
What’s in this?
Sit with me awhile.
Nigh is night, and just when you feel
it’s time to stave off another tip of the hat,
you hear the scythes whirring in.
Why, it’s another sunrise,
illuminating the russet trees, pink chimney-smoke,
just a single plume.
Heck if there’s not
something about that new little pizza joint next door
that makes you hope they succeed,
a felt reaction to all the pulpy pizazz going round,
and yet by now this happenstance
should be sufficiently muddied.
Clarity squared.
Drifting in through failure’s open window:
serenity sinking back into the hazy whine—
a rustling
of stiff brims fraying.
Youthful Love Poem Revised for My Collected Works
September Song
The sultry wind scattering
a few more leaves from the trees
into the pale September grass…
Beginning to doze
from a little too much afternoon wine…
The summer going, going…
Then a surge of remembrance:
The worried look you fixed me with that day
as if to confirm
the lost mind I was claiming
though it was you I was losing
not my mind
and you knew that as you closed the car door for me
and I started the engine
the last time I would ever see you in this life
the only one for love
Sumped Ember Song
The cutworm breeze gathers
myriad seeds from the clouds
flings them into the wild autumn desert . . .
Awakening
from a loss of dawn’s dreamless naphtha—
you brush away winter seeping in, in
a draining balm:
The smile you saddled yourself with that afternoon
as if to reject
the found secretions loosed upon the magical hellscape
though it was my own shimmer I was collecting
not the scraps
and you claimed nothing as you opened the elevator door for me (no car, only the shaft)
and I dropped and
rolled free of
the first instance I would forget you in this life
this life
the only one for
all that
