Joseph Cooper
Joseph Cooper is the author of several books of poetry, most recently, Porlock (Spuyten Duyvil 2015).
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from Zen Skins
~1~               There is silence here,
without surrendering to it
               walking the woods tonight
                              legs strong as mountain weeds.~2~                              Something feels,
or something makes us feel
               the nailed and hammered wood
                              whining on its posts
chewed & tattered
                              with deliberate precision.~3~They seem closer than anything else,
answers to questions it would do me no good to ask
                                             the eastern sky
                              torn by wars of perpetual change
                                                            as all things are.~4~Some say we ought to show life
                                             how we lived it
               but then I might never have climbed
                                                            Kilimanjaro
               fending off its thin ascendant air
                              with metallurgic grip.
Joseph Cooper is the author of several books of poetry, most recently, Porlock (Spuyten Duyvil 2015).