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Zeus Otricoli Pio-Clementino |
In April 2002, "Zeus Music" was published in
Dogwood: a journal of poetry & prose
at Fairfield University, Fairfield, Connecticut.
The judge for that year's contest
was poet Dana Gioia, who selected
my poem among four entries
for honorable mention.
In April 2002, "Zeus Music" was published in
Dogwood: a journal of poetry & prose
at Fairfield University, Fairfield, Connecticut.
The judge for that year's contest
was poet Dana Gioia, who selected
my poem among four entries
for honorable mention.
Zeus Music
James Hart
The farmer hears his brindled bull, the lowing herd,
The farmer hears his brindled bull, the lowing herd,
and he hears it now in the red Harley revving gravel
up the drive, a tattooed demi-god, that little bastard,
riding astride thunder. He
hears it after this dry spell,
brimstone in his nose, his daughter gone someday,
and how she’ll ride out tonight gripping that lithe waist
without a backward glance, or by-your-leave, the ways
of girls today surprising him little, how they’ll taste
the wind between their teeth and call it love. He hears
it in the black trees now, like time and soughing waves
arriving here because the tide is right, a god in the gears
that’s with his daughter now as he prays she behaves.
He hears it in the aftermath of his disturbing dream—
landscape like a daughter, white surf and foreign shores—
and his wife hears it now, as she whispers to the room,
How like a bull he is, and how he
thunders when he snores.
This subject put me in mind of ELF -- an extra-low frequency that is basic to our awareness but is noticed only in such moments as these. It can be experienced as a "first-cause"--Zeus-like in that regard?
ReplyDeleteThank you for the comment! Sadly, I never found it sooner. The day I wrote this I was suffering great lower back pain yet cleaning weeds from the gravel in our driveway, and I worked this poem out in my head, wrote it later, and submitted it for some brief success! James
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