Landscape, with Livestock

(On €œPond at Thompson’s Station € by J. Kirk Richards)

by Tyler Chadwick

The sun has been misplaced.
Or, if you’d like to get more
Biblical, it’s returned

to the dove’s abyss €”or
was that Milton? I can’t be sure
as I dance so near the beginning

with words so supple they
bend into themselves until
only the landscape remains:

the field flushed white, hills
seduced into bed
by cloud vapor so thin it will

barely last past the break of day,
the trees an erratic screen
against the sudden emptiness.

Consumed in association,
their teeth tight to the grass,
the livestock nearest the water’s

point of clarity absorb this light
in slight movements of   jaw and
tongue, slowing the arc of day
 
as it reaches to nest
in the foreground
of this slowly digested vale.

 

Find more Tyler here.

7 thoughts on “Landscape, with Livestock”

  1. Thank you, Tyler. This is a lovely poem to end the Spring Poetry Run-off with, and I like how its cotext slides sideways into the visual arts.

    Thanks to everyone who participated in WIZ’s celebration of the arrival of spring:

    Robert Frost
    Emily Dickinson
    Tyler Chadwick
    William Blake
    Jim Cobabe
    theric jepson
    greenfrog
    J. Max Wilson
    D. H. Lawrence

    It was fun—excellent company—and I deeply appreciate the interest shown in WIZ.

    If WIZ is around next year, we’ll do it again, so maybe folks want to consider writing spring-themed poems for the next runoff.

    🙂

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  2. No, no. Thank you, Patricia, for this prized place in your final Spring Poetry Runoff slot. I feel honored to have made it into your Zone twice.

    And since I’m confident WIZ will still be wizzing next year, I’ll get right on those poems.

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  3. I love how you begin sentences with interrogatives and end them declaratively, Wm.

    I think Tyler’s poem on Richard’s painting is a gorgeous act of community and I’m absolutely grateful and delighted to be able to end the Spring Poetry Runoff with it.

    Forgot to mention. For those who didn’t notice (WIZ’s link text colors can be a little understated), there’s a link to Richard’s painting beneath the poem’s title. If you haven’t gone over to Thompson’s Station for a look, you’ll be glad if you do.

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  4. LOLOL Nice turnabout

    No of course not especially not from a nice dictator like yourself

    But I imagine from some people declarations of war are declarations of war whether punctuated well poorly or not at all and in the case of some people acts of war punctuate declarations of any kind

    Viva Wm

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  5. Thanks, Wm.

    You’re such a generous dictator that I’m compelled to overlook your flippant comment about a poet’s giddiness and follow Patricia’s cry with “Heil AMV!” *he says with a goosestep and full arm salute*.

    Oh and, “Poets of the world unite!”

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