Poetry

0

The Hunter´s Morning
(aka “Greenridge”)

I gaze across a wooded glen
with grasses high of meadows past,
The river glides soft at my back
awaiting all upon a chance.

I hear the trout jump now and then
to fill their bellies with a feast,
While eagle sentries high above
watch for motion low beneath.

We all await our hopeful prey
patiently now this quiet day,
As sun comes up and warms within
our chilly bones from sitting still.

A knocking sound upon the wood
perhaps a rack against a tree,
My senses spring to the alert
a squirrel setting acorns free.

A glint of “blaze” far off afield
the orange grows as it draws near,
Driving the prey one hopes is nigh
a hunter son does soon appear.

The elk, the moose, the bear and deer
they all have once or twice passed here,
But of today it will not be
it’s just the eagle, fish and me.
Joe Penta

This poem was written in October
based on a hunting trip to Grand Lake
with his sons.

Send poetry submissions of 250 words or
fewer to poetry@boulderweekly.com.


American Life in Poetry: Column 527
edited by Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate

Seventy years ago, when I entered 
Beardshear Elementary in Ames, Iowa, 
the school employed a custodian, Mr. 
Shockley, who had for an office a closet 
under the stairs. I wish I could thank 
him for mopping up all our vomit and 
helping us buckle our galoshes. Here’s a 
fine poem about custodians by David 
Livewell, from New Jersey, whose most 
recent book of poems is Shackamaxon 
(Truman State Univ. Press, 2012).

Custodians

Retired from other trades, they wore 
Work clothes again to mop the johns 
And feed the furnace loads of coal. 
Their roughened faces matched the 
bronze

Of the school bell the nun would swing 
To start the day. They limped but 
smiled, 
Explored the secret, oldest nooks: 
The steeple’s clock, dark attics piled

With inkwell desks, the caves beneath 
The stage on Bingo night. The pastor 
Bowed to the powers in their hands: 
Fuses and fire alarms, the plaster

Smoothing a flaking wall, the keys 
To countless locks. They fixed the lights 
In the crawl space above the nave 
And tolled the bells for funeral rites.

Maintain what dead men made. Time 
blurs 
Their scripted names and well-waxed 
floors, 
Those keepers winking through the 
years 
And whistling down the corridors.

American Life in Poetry is made possible 
by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), 
publisher of 
Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the 
Department of English at the University 
of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright 
©2014 by David Livewell, “Custodians,” 
from 
Southwest Review (Vol. 99, no. 2, 
2014). Poem reprinted by permission of 
David Livewell and 
Southwest Review. 
Introduction copyright © 2015 by The 
Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s 
author, Ted Kooser, served as United 
States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry 
to the Library of Congress from 2004- 
2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.