Tony Crunk, poems

Recently, I checked several books out of the Bellarmine University library, mostly contemporary poetry. Among these included workks by Galway Kinnell, Donald Hall, and Joseph Brodsky, but more importantly, the book 'Living in the Resurrection' by Kentucky poet, Tony Crunk. The book won the Yale Younger Poets Prize in 1994, and most certainly deserves the title. I've been reading through it slowly all week, and continue, over and over again, from poem to poem, to be enchanted and impressed. This poem, "February," is among my favorites, though not necessarily the best one in the collection. I suggest that anyone who bothers to read this post - better yet, anyone who can read, period - go out and find a copy of Crunk's book. You can thank me later.

FEBRUARY

The copperhead and moccasin
are sleeping
vein deep in the blood of winter.

Magnolias
rub their swelling hands together
attempting to discover fire.

Blue shirts
my traveling clothes
once so carefully mended

now shredding
on scarecrows we forgot to bring in
in November.

I walk among them
now, in the dusting snow and moonlight
my arms stretched out -

my shadow
the cross
that one day will bear me away.

T. Crunk