Poems

Original Poetry by Warren Gaston

The Hawk

The hawk's immaculate eyes. gaze down from its drift and spots a flash of brown shimmer disturbing distant grass. Assuming I know the hawk’s first thought, instinctual, immediate and without doubt, I wonder if there is a second thought, measured, reflective and...

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Violin

When I hear a violin in the hand of a master, it is hard not to think of dead goats and their guts, or a horse disturbed by its slightly altered tail, or think of a maple forest grieving one of its own, or think of discipline, hours and hours of practice. I think of...

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To Maurice Merleau-Ponty

"Our view of man will remain superficial so long as we fail to go back to the origin of silence, so long as we fail to find, beneath the chatter of words, the primordial silence, and as long as we do not describe the action which breaks this silence. The spoken word...

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A Plea from a Poet

If I gave you a nail would you call it a rooster, or even a screw, closer to true but still no cigar. Would you eat it with cream cheese and capers in the corner deli of your imagination, the bagel discarded on the floor, now a toy tire broken from a Tonka truck by an...

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Questions for a Young Economist

Three words your professional discipline will require you to consider: many        more        much How much is much? How many is much? How many more is too many, too much? How much less is enough? How much less is more than enough? These are the questions of our...

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Nothing Happens for a Reason

After everything happens, even more happens, and more after that. After that squirrels happened, regularly or irregularly, although none born by parthenogenesis as far as scientists can determine. No miracle, nothing like that. After squirrels, acorns happened, trees...

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The Text & Beyond

An anguished figure on a hill, her knees scuffed, her dress torn, a dented bucket empty in her hand. I look in my book to see if the text I remembered from childhood and my more seasoned adult imagination, could come into agreement. I discovered Jack and the well....

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To an Insect: On the Dangers of Poetry

Hazard along the spine, stanzas running toward the brink, the book’s menacing glued hinge, a lethal pivot between pages 122 and 123, and you, peripatetic period, wandering dot, bug in the valley of the shadow of Lorca’s ballads and laments and songs of death. This is...

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My History

While I was sleeping, my history rested with me all night long. When I woke this morning, my history was alert at the side of my bed.

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