for Mark Strand
Yesterday I heard
someone I knew—
not well, but liked —
had died, disease
unwinding him till
he was gone.
The horizon is scored
by a faint commotion—
vapor trails, cars,
but none are near.
The sky is milk white
and quiet here.
On the lawn, I fill
more black bags.
Almost all the leaves
have turned. Winded
and warm, I drag them
to the curb.
See David Yezzi read in Philadelphia at the Painted Bride Quarterly reading series on Monday, December 9th, at the Black Sheep Pub. More info here.
David Yezzi’s latest books of poetry are Birds of the Air and Black Sea (both in the Carnegie Mellon Poets Series). His verse play Schnauzer, produced by The Baltimore Poets Theater in 2017, was recently published by Exot Books. A former director of the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y in New York, he is chair of the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins and editor of The Hopkins Review. This spring he will perform the title role in King Lear at the Baltimore Shakespeare Factory.
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