Looking For An Eye: Poetry by Peter Krok.

Looking For An Eye: Poetry by Peter Krok. ( Foothills Publishing POBOX 68 Kanona, NY 14856 Looking For An Eye: Poetry by Peter Krok. $15.

Peter Krok writes in the introduction to his new collection of poetry “Looking for an Eye” that, : “ the process of self-discovery involves looking in two directions, both inwards and outwards, and these poems are meant to reflect that search.”

Krok, an editor at Philadelphia’s Schuylkill Valley Journal, encapsulates his search in the title poem: “Looking for an Eye.” The poet writes about his fumbling search to find his third eye, or poet’s eye: “ Fumbling in the dark, always looking/ for an eye, he hurls stones/ at his shadow. Voices startle him. / A stranger keeps stalking/ Each time he seems to see, /a finger pokes his eye. / He sits on beach steps, head against hands. / A child comes up to him. / Can I help you, Mister? /Saying No thanks, / he stares at the Atlantic…”

And since I have worked the 3 to 11 shift at McLean Hospital, a psychiatric hospital just outside of Boston noted for its resident poets Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, I was drawn to the poem “Second Shift.” It is a poem that speaks beautifully to the relentless march of time, the “dull decline of days,” and tired resignation mixed with quiet desperation.



“ You come home drooped and hungry
Night yawns The wife sleeps…
Slump on the couch. Stare
like a disheveled store mannequin
toward the rooms in your midnight…

Do you know what it is What I mean
You want to break
the dull decline of days slipping
through the stubborn hole in life
but your knuckles are not strong enough.”

Highly Recommended