Don Reese

Collected Works

the finder of feathers 
and rocks has returned
who rescues the cordiform 

(a heart rock blends in
if you don’t see it 
just right
or the sand covers the cleft
the stone heart is easy to miss
just as all rocks reveal depths and glow
orange white red sandy
and when they dry
a stone remains a stone
a heart retains its cleft),

who mounts
the blue pinions in cork
and puts them here 
and there,
whose ad hoc installations 
festoon the available  
with intricacies of angles or spirals
in carefully glassed 
heaps,

who fills pockets with shells and moss,

whose little glass boxes
can be struck
by the sunlight
or momentary stops
or sporadic glances
or awareness 
of them
  at all;
that they are here
finds you and recovers you

Don Reese—Personal Statement:

“My biography can be clearly stated as geography: A line connecting my homes would be a scribble in the Pacific Northwest, a straight line to Albuquerque, and then east to Providence, as if someone were nudged but salvaged a checkmark. I have both a Ph.D. in early American literature and a twenty-six-year history as a high school English teacher. I was particularly attracted to the images on your website and the way they together communicate a dynamic between what's past and what's moving. I have published poems in literary journals like Blue Mesa Review, Proem, Lemonspouting, and The Delmarva Review, and I have recorded two essays aloud for This I Believe New England.”