Gregory Fraser
They were nothing but a few bare trees
warped in the north shore's gauzy light,
nothing but a few stripped hickories

or oaks thinned by blight, their low
limbs crusted in snow, but something
in the way they stood apart from others

in that wood across acres of ice,
something about their fixture
under a hard white sky, caught

and held the eye. Still, they were
nothing but a few bare trees—nothing,
nonetheless, a few of us at first, then more

whose houses lined the south end's
smoother shore, came to take for masts,
gnarled and gray, of a schooner

moored in port, its twisted yardarms
strung with sails furled and tied.
In the hum of the here and now,

press of errand and chore, that hazy
premise could be consigned
to atolls of the mind. It was nothing,

after all, but a few bare trees. Yet
in the hours close to dawn, or just
at dusk, seated by picture windows

or rocking foot to foot, ghosted
by our breaths on porches and docks,
we couldn't help but conjure

warmer waters, greener scenes.
The wary among us thought of Cook,
Magellan, brought down in blood

on islands far from home. The tragic
recalled Gauguin, ensconced in
thatch and reed—suicidal, syphilitic.

Those who sought adventure, no
matter the cost, heard the outlands
cry, while the lonely and shut up

ached—some stifled sobs—
at the prospect of escape.
And those less rootless than the rest,

less maudlin and less fraught,
nearer their last days, stared out
at a ship (if only a few

bare trees) stuck for a season in
but bound away from time,
waiting to carry them off.
from the book LITTLE ARMAGEDDON / Northwestern University Press
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"Selection of Garus Abdolmalekian's Poetry Published in German"

"Forty-one poems from his collections 'Acceptance,' 'Hollows,' 'Lines Change Places in the Dark,' 'The Faded Colors of the World' and 'The Middle East Trilogy: War, Love, Loneliness' have been selected for the book entitled 'When the War Ended, Peace Killed the People' ('Als der Krieg zu Ende War, Brachte der Frieden die Menschen Um'). Translated by Jutta Himmelreich, the book has been published by Sujet Verlag."

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What Sparks Poetry:
Alyse Knorr On John Keats' "Bright Star"
 
"I loved picturing the star in the poem watching the waves clean the shores and the snow graze the mountaintops. I loved how the first half of the poem painted a picture by negation, like a puzzle, and how it wrenched me from the cold, lonely reaches of outer space down to the grounded, intimate moment of laying one's head on a lover's breast and hearing the quiet of her breathing: all made equally sacred in the poem's grand equation."
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