Ghazal 4/24

the willow’s limbs fidget in an April breeze from the west
& the sun is nonetheless blind white in implacable blue

so I have to ask why the dead & the lost come to visit
as I wander the night away in an old house up a staircase

a maple bannister a light in a cut glass fixture a cold white
light—the bedsheets creased & wrinkled into alphabets &

so I have to ask why we have travelled so far from the white white
magnolia blooms of another April & the granite statue of Christ loom-

ing at Swannanoa lugubrious & floating on another wind rattling
with laughter “like dice shook” I said—the breeze agitating the willow

voicelessly—in a supermarket parking lot far over the hills & the
rolling gnarl of bitterbrush & the rudbeckia’s buttery eruption—

we were going our separate ways & there was eye contact
unsettling across the blue cigarette smoke years the curtains carried

across a street to a house as dark as spruce trees en-
circling a Vermont backyard in an August green

dusk—the lost & the dead come turning their faces into the
breeze—the sharp white ripples across the wind-stirred pond

Jack Hayes
© 2010

Good Morning, Again

Hello, folks.  My life over the past couple of months has involved a lot of things going much differently than I anticipated.  Overall, the surprises have been for the good—a very fortunate thing, indeed.

So here’s another surprise: The Spring Ghazals blog is back, tho with quite a bit different format than in the past.  From here on out, I’ll be posting the actual poems from the book, two per week (I’m thinking Wednesday & Saturday as an ongoing schedule, tho this week’s poem will post on Friday).  That means there should be posts thru July, at which point I’ll assess what the blog’s ongoing function might be.  But from now until then, it’ll be all poetry, all the time.

This means a choice of course, for you as poetry reader, not to say, consumer.  You can read all the poems on the blog over the course of these next several months, gratis, or you can shell out actual money to have a book.  An interesting thought I’ve been entertaining recently is that books may not go obsolete as some have predicted, but instead become “premium” items.  Just as many recording artists now allow you to “pay what you want” (sometimes even without setting a minimum price) for downloadable music, but charge for CDs or, even more especially, vinyl, the future of publishing” may follow suit in some way, especially as the net allows poets & fiction writers to become independent artists, operating outside the traditional publishing models.  Time, as usual, will tell—even if it doesn’t tell us.

So, please swing on by from time to time to read the poems!  They will be posted in “book order,” with the first poem, “Ghazal 4/24” appearing on Friday January 21st, & then one poem each on subsequent Wednesdays & Friday until the manuscript is complete. 

& now for a words from our sponsors!



The Spring Ghazals can be purchased at any of the following online outlets:

Lulu
Amazon
Barnes & Noble (new—& a bargain at $11.40 US!)
Amazon UK (£7.94)

Both Amazon & Lulu have the book for $12 US.