June's Featured PoetDave Smith (1942-) was born in Portsmouth, Virginia and was graduated from the University of Virginia. After four years in the Air Force he settled on an academic career. He established a poetry magazine called Back Door. He has published (as of this writing) seven collections of poetry and a novel. He is regarded as a perceptive observer of human nature in poetry that springs from his homeland in Virginia, penetrates the intersections of personal and public history, and explores stylistic experiments to see what they yield.
Wreck in the Woods
Under that embrace of wild saplings held fast,
surrounded by troops of white mushrooms, by wrens
visiting like news-burdened ministers known
only to some dim life inside, this Model
A Ford like my grandfather’s entered the earth.
What were fenders, hood, doors, no one washed, polished,
grazed with a tip of finger, or boyhood dream.
I stood where silky blue above went wind-rent,
pines, oaks, dogwood ticking, pushing as if grief
called families to see what none understood. What
plot of words, what heart-shudder of men, women
here ended so hard the green world must hide it?
Headlights, large, round. Two pieces of shattered glass.
Further Reading: Little Boats, Unsalvaged : Poems, 1992-2004
July's Featured Poet: Marge Piercy
Content developed by local resident and poet Leland Jamieson
