Lunette 3
Sometimes what the child needs is less
a sermon than a song, and a bird
to sit silent beside her and take notice.
Any wonder we think in affinities.
We know our language fails as notes
fail in air so they might, in us, continue.
The arc of the scimitar, the harp,
the long maternal surge, the bow flex
of the sternum and the ache of pitch,
they reemerge in shapes yet to fully
crown or cry or crest into their context.
When I see a half-fallen curtain,
I see an eye on the verge of sleep.
Or arrival. The lighting of the mind.
Or the kiss that is a little of each.
I see a sky’s great unfinished project,
and who is not, orphan of an orphan
planet, so battered once it tore apart.
Crust and mantle shattered, pumice bloomed,
and in the gash, the residual hiss
of rain rose. And bled a lifeform onto shore.
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Bruce Bond is the author of thirty-five books including, most recently, Patmos (Juniper Prize), Behemoth (New Criterion Prize), Liberation of Dissonance (Schaffner Award for Literature in Music), Choreomania, and Invention of the Wilderness; plus two books of criticism, Immanent Distance and Plurality and the Poetics of Self. Among his forthcoming books are Therapon (with Dan Beachy-Quick), Vault (Richard Snyder Award), Lunette, and The Dove of the Morning News (Test Site Poetry Prize, University of Nevada Press). Other honors include the Crab Orchard Award, Elixir Press Poetry Award, Tampa Review Book Prize, two TIL Best Book of Poetry awards, fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Texas Institute for the Arts, and seven appearances in Best American Poetry.
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Jim Ross’ photo publications include Barnstorm, Blood Orange Review, Bombay Gin, Burningword, Camas, Cold Mountain Review, Columbia Journal, Feral, Friends Journal, Manchester Review, Memoryhouse, Montana Mouthful, Rat’s Ass, Saw Palm, Stoneboat, Stonecoast, Typehouse, UU World, and Whitefish. Photo essays include Amsterdam Quarterly, Barren, DASH, Kestrel, Ilanot Review, Inklette, Litro, New World Writing, Roanoke Review, Sisyphus, Sweet, Wordpeace, Palaver, Paperbark and Typehouse. Jim and his wife—parents of two health professionals and grandparents of five little ones—split their time between city and mountains.
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