Poetry

From Larry Gavin's new collection The Initiation of Praise:

My Reader

My reader is part of a small

club like those who fancy

terriers and the taking of game

to ground. My reader stumbled

on this book by accident because

of a mistransposed order

number or an absent minded

librarian that was thinking

about fishing instead of listening

at the time. My reader

holds a glass of something

that has some grief in it,

and folds the book

back on itself breaking the binding

like day breaks in the east

orange and then yellow. My reader

smells of dew and wild mint,

and can keep a secret, and knows

at least two good lawyers.

My reader is sensitive; believes

in Bigfoot and not the Loch Ness

monster. My reader's favorite

north Americabn ungulate

is the Musk Ox. My reader

dreams of flying, dreams of vessels of containment, dreams

of more poems like this one.


--Available from Red Dragonfly Press (www.reddragonflypress.org)