Unreal precision of the houses at first light
45 years of rain and bodice
Grasses woods wildflowers
To be the only woman at this hour
Out in it one beauty one movie
And I am her hapless mule
Out of the blue one morning
My father took me north upriver
To see the mothball fleet
His war afloat and ghostly
Pennants of rain hanging from each spar
It’s what we are
Discards of memory
Unreal until the only woman wakes
Source: Poetry (June 2009).
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This poem originally appeared in the June 2009 issue of Poetry magazine
Born in the Bronx, Donald Revell received his PhD at SUNY Buffalo and is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry, translations, and essays. Steeped in the work of Henry David Thoreau and William Carlos Williams, Revell’s poetry is “seriously Christian but not doctrinaire, mystical without setting intellect aside, angry over political matters without ever growing stale or shrill, and more often joyful than any other . . .
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