Hobble Creek Review
| Jon D. Lee |
1500-Year-Old Jardine Juniper, Logan, Utah
Only a single, twisted
curl of finger remains: a solitary
shock of green basking
in evening light, the delicate
weight of needles slowly
crushing the thousand-pound arm
of wood below. So fragile
an existence, this mad rush
through time; so quick the passage
from then to now, a life
of darkness and light blurring
into a single memory of grey.
What promises can we make
between life and death? What oaths
are there that merit our speaking
them aloud, our releasing
them into the wind to be borne aloft
and fall back on us a million,
a billion heartbeats later? Only
these, scratched with curled
fingers on our roof of sky: here
I was, here
I am, here
I will be.
Standing Above White Pine Lake—Logan, Utah
In the time between
the wingbeats
of the hawk circling
far above my head,
a rotten aspen branch breaks
its wooden moorings, rattles
against thirty feet of rock cliff,
then rests near brilliant blue flowers.
Below, a single fish jumps
from cold mountain lake, closes
its mouth around a mosquito, and descends
into water so clear and still
that I only know its presence
through reflections.
Miles from here, some traffic
light flickers green, yellow, red.
But in this place, time’s programmed
sequences are more subtle:
green leaf in afternoon breeze;
yellow twin in lake water;
red rush of rabbit heart
the instant before the hawk strikes.
Birdwatching--Guaymas, Mexico
Yesterday the pelican dove
the length of my body
through water turned
to air, grasped
prey in mouth, rose,
then, sitting on small waves, lifted
back its head and ate.
Today
on the beach I found
the bird half-covered
by sand, mouth
and wings open, throat forced
shut by fishing wire.
Only a single, twisted
curl of finger remains: a solitary
shock of green basking
in evening light, the delicate
weight of needles slowly
crushing the thousand-pound arm
of wood below. So fragile
an existence, this mad rush
through time; so quick the passage
from then to now, a life
of darkness and light blurring
into a single memory of grey.
What promises can we make
between life and death? What oaths
are there that merit our speaking
them aloud, our releasing
them into the wind to be borne aloft
and fall back on us a million,
a billion heartbeats later? Only
these, scratched with curled
fingers on our roof of sky: here
I was, here
I am, here
I will be.
Standing Above White Pine Lake—Logan, Utah
In the time between
the wingbeats
of the hawk circling
far above my head,
a rotten aspen branch breaks
its wooden moorings, rattles
against thirty feet of rock cliff,
then rests near brilliant blue flowers.
Below, a single fish jumps
from cold mountain lake, closes
its mouth around a mosquito, and descends
into water so clear and still
that I only know its presence
through reflections.
Miles from here, some traffic
light flickers green, yellow, red.
But in this place, time’s programmed
sequences are more subtle:
green leaf in afternoon breeze;
yellow twin in lake water;
red rush of rabbit heart
the instant before the hawk strikes.
Birdwatching--Guaymas, Mexico
Yesterday the pelican dove
the length of my body
through water turned
to air, grasped
prey in mouth, rose,
then, sitting on small waves, lifted
back its head and ate.
Today
on the beach I found
the bird half-covered
by sand, mouth
and wings open, throat forced
shut by fishing wire.
Jon D. Lee, After years of puttering away, published his first book of
poetry---Ode to Brian: The Long Season--in 2006. After an even longer
period of meandering, he received his Ph.D. in Folklore from Memorial
University of Newfoundland in mid-2009. Jon currently lives with his wife,
Lynnette, in Boston, Massachusetts, where he teaches literature at various
universities and is hard at work on a second book of poetry, as well as an
academic text on the role of narratives in disease outbreaks, both of which
are guaranteed to be published before the next millennium.
poetry---Ode to Brian: The Long Season--in 2006. After an even longer
period of meandering, he received his Ph.D. in Folklore from Memorial
University of Newfoundland in mid-2009. Jon currently lives with his wife,
Lynnette, in Boston, Massachusetts, where he teaches literature at various
universities and is hard at work on a second book of poetry, as well as an
academic text on the role of narratives in disease outbreaks, both of which
are guaranteed to be published before the next millennium.
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