October 2000 | poetry, William B. Hunt
The woods are stinging for glory. Acorns under a starry night. Before midnight, the hickory logs will be used to start another bonfire. The pony pulls on his rope, firmly tied to a post. Somebody has already chopped the firewood. Last night, the brittle ice formed on the pools. Somehow, you turn out some bitter camper’s coffee–you let it boil for awhile in an old iron pot over an open log fire. If you stay in this territory, it will be because this bitter coffee tastes good in your cup after another hour of rain has fallen in it.
October 2000 | poetry, William B. Hunt
Bricks will teach you everything you need, especially five stories of basic brick arranged like a complete education. Or is it nine stories of brick, tottering high among the trees and distant sky until you wonder why? Brickwork tells its own story, has its own legend. That’s how it is with the Olde Columbine schoolhouse, that mystery under blue-gray rainclouds. If you would walk by the Olde Columbine schoolhouse to observe the ruins of American history, I would be charmed, and I would not mind at all if you think of me in it laboring nights, getting it ready.
October 2000 | poetry, William B. Hunt
Poetry was something left in the stars like a trace of old smoke. It is the language of symphonies and the language of night in violent conversation. It is old words turned into a black art which saints may set forth like whirling fire in their religious fury. Poetry herself dreams of a complete midnight where the world’s wild colors flourish. In the waters of dawn, you may come to the garden of poetry where the flowers are reddening out whatever remains of night’s traces. Poetry is the neutron and the diamond, the french kiss under Spanish moss; brain vitamins.
October 2000 | poetry, William B. Hunt
Tangling across pine cone paths while the moon sets against dark indigo, wild raspberries are growing again this year. Time for the fiery poems autumn inspires. We are walking on moss beds as before. Wild raspberries are growing everywhere. We’re like little children, eating the tinted fruit under burning stars. We keep our jewelled fingers high in dancing. “Come inside cool moon shadows,” she says, entranced, “for I’ll give you awareness of rhyme’s inner sparkling.” Wild raspberries are growing again. We hold lanterns late at night over the pine cone path. Fill your apron, Carrie, full with wild red raspberries.
October 2000 | poetry, William B. Hunt
I feel as I go into my room things which make me reflect upon lemon cracks in the sunlight and the burnt moon that lives in nothingness while old age comes to your mind, heart, and your soft, good face. I feel as I step into my eccentric chambers that I must find my way into a conquering eloquence, a Christmas for the veins of the new century drawn from the churchyards of the Fourteenth Century. It is just that there are not enough sonatas on the face of this planet, and I have not enough seaweed for your hair.
October 2000 | poetry, William B. Hunt
Kelly: I think Kelly is striking and marvellous although the common reaction must be different than this. I think of Kelly as the all-electric person, and I think she can listen to the music of the powerlines while she is just standing on the street. Kelly reveres the same red clouds that I revere, as they dare each other to move sharply through the sky at rakish angles. But often Kelly isn’t here at all, often she is just the green leaves dancing in the giant oak which could be called Kelly green. Her favorite song is “Deep River.”
