Poetry Lunch

Had a nice poetry lunch at Elliott Bay Books yesterday with my friend John Wright. He is a retired endocrinologist, who began writing poetry at age 58, and now has three books of poems. We had vegetarian chili, and talked about the difference between anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism, and wondered why so many of the younger generation of poets have no nature and no autobiography in any of their poems.


Praise

This quiet elation that comes, finally,
at seventy-one

— I no longer envy the snow birds
their flying south

and this year winter solstice comes
without the slightest longing for light —

It's something akin to a leaf-bare maple.
Its upraised limbs.


* from As Though Praying: poems from Decatur Island
Bluestone Books, 2002