Seeker Magazine
George Wallace
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An award winning poet and journalist, George Wallace lives and works on Long Island, New York. His first chapbook, Tie Back the Roses, was published by Explicitly Graphic in England in 1986 and sold out within months. The Milking Jug was published by Cross Cultural Communications in 1988. In 1993, Tales of a Yuppie Dropout (Writers Ink) and Butterflies and Other Tattoos (Bootleg Press) were released. His fifth chapbook of poems, The Poems of Augie Prime was published by Writers Ink in the summer of 1999, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Wallace has served as a member of the board of directors of the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association, Taproots, TeenSpeak and CityArts; and has been a poetry and art critic for several literary and art publications. Wallace is a primary force behind numerous poetry journals, anthologies, reading series, radio and television poetry programs in the Long Island region.
A former health care worker in third world countries, Wallace is a prominent historical journalist and political columnist regionally. His work has been performed in venues from San Francisco and Los Angeles to New York, as well as in Paris and London.
His writings have been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Korean and Macedonian, and his conversations with renowned poets Allen Ginsberg, William Stafford, Robert Bly, Sharon Olds, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Adrienne Rich, Paul Muldoon, David Ignatow and others have been published in numerous journals.
ducklings
inside the bone blood & yes even the grain of morning
as in the wing of this mother duck nesting down
in the damp patch of lawn my creaky mower wheel
annually sinks in come summer - a few insects buzzing
it is spring not summer but it all comes back to me
the iridescence of her mate the march toward life
she is another waddling year older familiar as i am
with this contusion of earth this place where
underground springs outflow a momentary abundance
of snowmelt spills into our garden & they return to us
a credulous couple among all the world's fertile places
& this one only will do for their great ritual brooding -
three fearless cadets this year a new line of ducklings
i will go
beyond flamingo keys palming night to its slumber
& the wondering incandescence of beach music,
i will travel outside the shoaled circle of waters
certainly to occupy the ocean where you await me.
these gossamer stars chattering their constellations
bind the landed to a recitation beyond ordinary silences.
& yes the tall birds wading! but i will go beyond all these
to a bold communion, the eyes of god upon us making love.
the shore
in its grave going
this tumble we call day
purpled with the remains
of a fire you could not comb
from your hair, the flowing
throng & wind long nimbus
returned from a place where
death & the long tumult
could not alter or stain
your most original form & yet
restored as the great creature
which, lurking, yhou always were
the salt water of your desiring
the stone white knife burnishing
a parasol to my century of sand
you loom once more across dark tabletops
& running everywhere your women in green
waving coats storm the breaking beach
you offer up a fluid currency
to lost sailors
snowfall
the way the wind begins its steep descending
no longer denizen of cloud gardens but here among men.
it was you wasn't it & you were young & climbing down
skies of your own. one among a thousand islands you
fat with snowflakes & a forest of ten thousand pines. there is
a hollow by the distant brook & once more among strangers
you lying mouth to mouth with them. it is not the first time
you tell yourself. just like temptation you give way to gravity
& by this you are frozen. the slow growth of stilled waters
covering everything. all the unfinished windows
dreaming of spring.
refugees
an egret predicting inclement weather
from its perch
along the shallows of an inland sea
this windsculpture rendered motionless
before a family of clouds
turning its face to the east
and here along the fast evaporating horizon
a mariner scanning night skies
for corridors of flight
after rain
a seabird veiled in slender clouds
making its way back to the sea
surveys encinitas
amid sage mudslide & the shimmering
eucalyptus grove
this budding moon herding jackrabbits
& midnight snakes
shows its totem to the earth
& the earth? it makes angry faces back
at the moon
from up a valley no man among us
ever created
point loma
unforgettable the blood-thirsty amusements aboard
cabrillo's incoming vessel
the conquistador in his new helmet finding diversion
for sixteenth century men
could not have realized riches such as these: clung
to arid cliffsides
whatever possible bud grown leaping to its rendezvous
with life. out here
the wind is king of us all not philip the castilian or disney
ask the hummingbird
blown in from seaward or the glaring lizard low-lying on
this rolling promontory
braced against every human movement
(Copyright - All Rights Reserved by George Wallace - No reproduction without express permission from the author)
Photograph by James Twomey III
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George Wallace at GGeorgewallace@aol.com