[1243] Behold

Guest poem sent in by David Highland <david.highland@>

And came forth like Venus from an ocean of
heat waves, morning in his pockets and the buckets in his hands
he emerged from the grey shed, tobacco and wind
pursed together in song from his tight lips he gathered the day
and went out to cast wheat before swine.  And in
his mind he sang songs and thought thoughts, images of day
and heat, wind and sweat, dreams of silver and
visions of green earth twisting the cups of his mind
he crossed his fence of wire, the south Utah steppes
bending the air into corners of the sky he entered
the yard to feed his swine.  And his pigs, they come.

 	-- David Lee

Sashidhar Dandamudi's comments on the Tony Hoagland poem (Poem #1236,
'Self-Improvement') made me think of David Lee.  It was when I first read
Lee's collection, 'Porcine Canticles', that I realized there is no subject
that poetry can't treat with beauty and dignity (and hilarity).  I hadn't
thought about 'Behold' in a long time, but I enjoyed being reminded and
thumbing through Lee's collection again.

david

[Martin adds]

There is something about this poem - images like "morning in his pockets",
lines like "And his pigs, they come" - that I can only describe as
magnificent. The seamless superposition and blending of the real and the
imagined evokes images worthy of some of the better fantasy novels. The
cadence of the words, too, is nigh flawless; I was reminded in places of
Patricia McKillip, which (for those of you unfamiliar with her work) is high
praise indeed.

[Links]

There's a biography here:
  http://www.unomaha.edu/~wla/DavidLee.html


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