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9th Annual Juried Reading Finalist
David Bond
A frustrated David Bond works at Morris Library, Southern
Illinois University, surrounded by thousands of books he
has no time to read. He has, however, published work lately
in Rhino, Prairie Poetry, Big Muddy, and Sou'Wester, has
two poems in the just-published anthology Where We Live:
Illinois Poets, and will be the featured poet this fall
in The Spoon River Poetry Review. David is a 2001 Illinois
Arts Council Fellowship winner whose work has recently been
featured on WTTW, Chicago Public Television, as part of
the Arts Across Illinois series, a poet who notes his second
place award in WBEZ's "Why I Should Be Poet Laureate of
Illinois" contest with pride and tongue firmly in cheek.
Quiet Time: For Verne Morton
There are great possibilities
in milkweed gone to seed
the crab apple tree in bloom
beside this dirt road
a young girl sitting
like nothing else
among one hundred white trilliums.
Winters
behind the sugar cabin
children eat snow
mixed with maple syrup.
Awaiting
the perfect combination
of wind and light
mill hands pose
unsmiling, arms folded.
Ponds are deep unreachable
dreams of negative and positive;
the sheep and cows docile as pets.
Please close your eyes
as a nitrate film flash
marks your fleck of breath.
What a paradise
of lilies surrounds
the Hawley child
calm in her casket.
-- David Bond
© 2003 The Poetry Center of Chicago
All Rights Revert Back to the Author Upon Publication.
No Portion of this poem may be reproduced without the expressed
permission of the author.
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