Verse in Which I Should Probably Be More Charitable Towards the Gift of a Book of Mediocre Verse

Every poem ends

with a reflection:

a fox or a deer

or a bird outside

the office window.

The lines before that

describe or hint at

some guilt or sad loss,

a breakup or death

or in a rear view,

a child teetering

on her tricycle,

taking a comic

fall, as her newly

divorced father drives

away. Before that

his memory of

a double rainbow,

now a phantom that

opens his heart like

a small fist that fits

just between his ribs.

The fist can not grab,

or clutch or hold on.

But it pounds as his

heart pounds, fluttering

like a golden bird

that an owl devours

at the dangerous

last hour of darkness,

first hour of daylight.

“So much bravery

here,” an old friend said

when she popped by to

drop off tomatoes

and this dog-eared book.

One poem begins:

“I begin inside,

inside a grey stone.”

Paul Jones has published poetry in many journals including Poetry, Ekphrastic Review, Red Fez, 2River View as well as in cookbooks, in travel anthologies, and in The Best American Erotic Poems: 1800 - Present (from Scribner). Recently, he was nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and three Best of the Web Awards. His chapbook, What the Welsh and Chinese Have in Common, was a North Carolina Writers Network award winner.
A manuscript of his poems crashed on the moon’s surface April 11, 2019 as part of Arch Mission’s Lunar Library delivered by SpaceIL’s Beresheet lander.