Issue > Poetry

Mark S Burrows

Mark Burrows' poems and translations have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, 91st Meridian, The Anglican Theological Review, The Christian Century, Southern Quarterly, Eremos, Weavings, Reunion: The Dallas Review, Metamorphoses and Almost Island, among others. A volume of his recent poems, The Chance of Home, will be published in 2016.

Still Life

is what it is, as in this
glazed Italian bowl:

one apple with a
single wrinkled leaf

clinging to the stem,
a twist of gnarly ginger,

and two shining
ripe lemons.

Still life is just what
it is, despite

our strongest longings
and deepest fears:

it is not indifferent
to us, and does

not wait for some gesture
of assent to form

in the mind's deep,
but simply

keeps what is still life,
as rain to earth,

as cloud to wind,
grass to field,

as hope to heart.

In Answer

         The part of art which is art, and not
    device, unshackles us from usefulness almost
entirely.
                      —Jane Hirshfield

A single
black-capped
chickadee sings
somewhere,
hidden
from sight,
her bursts
of song
falling
into silences
that linger
from the deep
of night.
Her music
rises like a
bright thread
of light
woven of
the fabric
of sleep.
She doesn't
wait for eye
to see or ear
to hear,
shaping
her voice
without regard
for audience,
her song
pointing
beyond
every
notion of
purpose we
can know,
in answer
only to the
coming
day and
to delight.