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      January 3, 2015DiasporaDoug Ramspeck

      And in Turner’s Sun Rising
      through Vapour:
       
      Fishermen Cleaning
      and Selling Fish,
      the eye moves
      without fail
      from the clutter
      of the human—
      this compact labor—
      to the sprawling
      whorls and smudges
      and smears
      of primitive sky.
      Once as a child
      in Wisconsin, I handed
      grape soda to a bear
      on a chain, and the smell
      of the animal body
      was as familiar as the grass
      I mowed each summer
      up and down our yard’s hill,
      watching, as I did,
      an older girl two houses over
      who sunbathed daily
      on a towel, and died—
      I later learned—
      when a train struck
      a car at a railroad crossing
      in distant Colorado.
      And although
      we’d never spoken,
      I grieved for weeks,
      believing I’d known
      her once the way a bear
      lifts a soda bottle
      in its paws, and sunlight
      can’t quite tell itself
      from morning clouds.

      from #44 - Summer 2014

      Doug Ramspeck

      “If we count reading and writing fiction and poetry, watching films, attending plays, listening to music lyrics, fantasizing, dreaming while asleep, and lying, we spend a surprisingly significant portion of our lives engaged with stories. I write poetry, I think, to join that human, storytelling chorus.”

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