Saturday, April 11, 2020

Poem During the Plague: Poem Six





Quest

Under the starry net cast above
is the full-blown gladness of a Beethoven symphony
on a midsummer’s night.
Here all is spoken in images at the juncture
of the lucid and the luminous where
transcendence pulls one into infinity,
where logic and pattern and ethereal
matters duel under impermanent stars
on slow-burn,
where the bioluminescent glow of fireflies
catch and hold the imagination along
with quiet majesty of cedar and poplar trees,
beach rose, mounds of moss –
where Nature is in her glory even through
the surreal fog of afternoon.
We are all made of star-stuff. (Let us not deceive
ourselves: At least ten percent of all stars have
at least one habitable planet,) dollops of rock
in perpetual time-slide,
and we strive to content ourselves
in the silky silence of our third planet from the Sun,
and amid Nature in her glory,
We inhale, we exhale.

                                       ~ Stephen Anderson

(Previously appeared in The Dream Angel Plays The Cello)

*   Stephen Anderson is a Milwaukee poet whose work has appeared in numerous print and online journals including Southwest ReviewTipton Poetry Journal, New Purlieu ReviewFree Verse, Verse Wisconsin, Foundling Review and Twist In Time. Many of Anderson’s poems have been featured on the Milwaukee NPR-affiliate WUWM Lake Effect Program. He is the author of Montezuma Resurrected And Other Poems (2001) and The Silent Tango of Dreams (2006 chapbook), and several of his poems appeared in the poetry collection, Portals And Piers (2012).  In the summer of 2013, six of his poems formed the text for a chamber music composition entitled The Privileged Secrets of the Arch performed by some musicians including two members of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and an opera singer. Because of a particular set of life experiences, Anderson considers himself a poet with a global perspective rather than a regional poet. His poetry collection, Navigating in the Sun, was published by Finishing Line Press in July, 2015. A first full-length poetry collection entitled In the Garden of Angels and Demons was published by Aldrich Press/Kelsay Books (2017.) His latest poetry collection, The Dream Angel Plays The Cello, was published also by Aldrich Press/ Kelsay Books in early 2019. 

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