Sunday, July 29, 2012

"A spirit to be still for", Long Island Poem for Sunday

Watch Hill, July
George William Fischer

sunrise dunes, mist & saltspray
rose, birdsong daybreak, a doe
steps silent, earcock, scentsniff,
sun ignites her tan & white, day
brightens, she grazes & climbs

there on a safe height she hears
as I whistle, bounds across her
ridge & down, whitetail flashing,
graceful dancer, she levels with me

nonchalant, she nibbles & steps
forward, a spirit to be still for.
thirty feet apart our moments pass,
I circle, she patiently moves
where I stood

she looks back, crosses my path,
close as any gentle creature
should come, with first warm kiss of sun
she disappears


'Watch Hill, July' by George William Fischer from 'A Long Island Year / Paumanok Revisited' published by Myshkin Press, Long Island. With author's permission.

You will remember George William Fischer from his Long Island bottle collections and Nassau County Photo Archive Center. He wrote about his poetry: "Early on, I was hugely influenced by the singers Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell.  Read e.e. cummings very early, also Emily Dickinson & Walt Whitman.  Later, Wendell Berry, T.S. Eliot, W.C. Williams, Charles Bukowski, Allen Ginsberg, &c&c."

"Fell in with a few new friends and in a burst of spirit & energy, we founded the Long Island Poetry Collective in 1974. The Collective sponsored many open readings, and hosted major poets – mainly at the Fine Arts Center in Roslyn. For a growing membership, we published a monthly Newsletter and offered numerous workshops. The first issue of Xanadu magazine appeared in 1976, also the year we began publishing books and chapbooks written by Long Island poets, under the Pleasure Dome Press imprint."

"I try to write tight narrative poems, and my earliest lessons from Cummings & Dickinson hopefully continue as powerful influences. The conversational tone of Charles Bukowski, Wendell Berry, Anne Sexton & many others is a challenging perfection."

"My chapbooks include First and Third and A Long Island Year, and the book dark birds have flown was published in 2008 by Myshkin Press."

Previous Long Island Poem for Sunday - "So slender is the island", Long Island Poem for Sunday

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