The Idea of Light
Poems on sky, suburbia, and observation
John’s latest poetry collection, The Idea of Light, is coming soon from Main Street Rag Publishing Company.
For a limited time, you can pre-order an exclusive advance copy at a special discounted price of $8 – available only before the book goes to press.
Secure your copy today and step into The Idea of Light.
Poem Samples
Before The Idea of Light arrives in full, explore a few selected poems from John’s latest collection.
The Idea of Light
1/
A midday moon says nothing of love:
Albedo ash, atmosphere none,
Heedless of sign or madness, amour.
Philly-to-Phoenix wide but thumb-
Covered, the pale, distressed denim,
Attic of landers, forgotten tools,
The poked eye predicted by Méliès,
Le Voyage dans La Lune, 1902.
2/
Dusk summons the idea of light:
A western crescent in ichor white,
Bleaching demon detail, place.
Or full and orange, helped by horizon
In the darkened east, an Old Man
Or Selene, the mind’s eye. Hey,
Diddle diddle the cat and the fiddle…
The illusion of huge. Let us pray.
An A.M. April Sky
God-wandering Jupiter, Saturn and Mars
Clear a maple in our suburban yard and stare
Steadily down, the gaze behavior of gods.
Given the Romans’ needy, geocentric lens:
Light-Bringer, Harvest, Father of War,
Now in Capricorn (loyalty) and Aquarius (brains).
Post-Copernicus, we understand ecliptic paths,
The flicker-killing arc seconds of a disk,
Present metrics describing hydrogen giants
And rock: an earth-size hurricane, rings
Of water ice, bellicose iron oxide,
Fixed diameter and distance, temperature, mass.
Info courtesy of probes and rovers, orbital
Eyes and soil samplers, a branding bot that’s
Given us the Columbia Hills, the Rolling Stones…
Ardent, early-rising amateurs log
Coordinate sets, epoch and transit times.
Magnitude makes the planets easy to track
As they outshine stars in the slowly brightening sky
And the convenient names of deities are conserved.
Mowing Toads
Toads will bound out from the mower in May,
The prosperous knot annual survivors of sleet
And snow, northeasters, spring’s Biblical rain.
I scoop my fellow mortals up and set
Them gently down among the fenced flowers.
Ugly? Cause of warts? In need of kissing?
In a fit of sympathy, Dives ignores folklore,
Imagines the pounding pellet heart, escaping
The nick in time – even as adrenalin prompts piss
In the kindly fist bearing the beast to safety.
I do mow a toad at times, a foolish
Concern as the generations certainly succeed.
And yet regrettable: Bufo americanus, guts a-glay,
Violence on an otherwise perfect suburban day.