His net poised in the flower garden,
his body still as statuary,
I ask what he is doing there.
“Listening,” he says. “To what?” “The whisper,
the whisper of butterflies flying.”
With a red net and black rubber boots,
he’s a nude naturalist at five
whose first word was a clear Bird.
Now he’s also hunting language.
When he sees the half mid-day moon,
(“Hey, what happened to the part out of it?”)
Or says during an inner-ear
infection, “I have a bird in my ears”
or leads a friend to the raspberries
(“These are our strawberry trees”), or asks
“How do you know that for?” we put
the moon back in the sky, explain
the canes, his strange whistling ears.
Yet we’re amateurs at seeing
what he sees, not really wishing
the world its accuracy, its perfect
tenses, dead stars, wingless horses.
How enclosed and dark the literal is,
a candle afraid of its own shadows.
How predictable our faultless syntax
hopping along like a city sparrow
for a bread crumb, a cold fry.
When, oh when, in the mind’s green
neon did that bright café close?
When did the teapot fall from the clouds,
the angels park on a pinhead?
After lunch, he plays with his dogs—
the old one and the puppy—
his scepter, a tube from paper towels.
Kicking his heels, he marches and chants:
“I am the King of the Jungle of dogs.”
Even now, his words are caught in a net,
then vanish like the pellets of food
he’s so carefully laid out in rows.
ISBN 1-59661-127-8
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Joseph Powell says, “we’re amateurs at seeing,” and yet he’s a man with a clear eye for not only details, but what those
details can tell us about being alive. I don’t mean that he’s a big one for embroidery; I mean he knows how to make knots
that tie things together at the joints. What a pleasure it is to find a poet who still pays attention to the fine nuances
of craft. As we hope for from any poet, he manages to get far beyond surfaces, examining the urgencies of the present with
a fearless need to know, and the lingering effects of the past without nostalgia. “I want a vision,” he says, “that makes
my whole body listen.” So do we, and Powell delivers, time after time.
—Samuel Green,
Washington State Poet Laureate
The poems in Hard Earth are firmly rooted in family and rural life, yet range as far as Greece. Powell lavishes on
locals everywhere the same uncompromising and concentrated attention that makes his treatment of domestic animals so
distinctive. Attentive to craft and form, this is a poetry to turn to when you crave wisdom.
—Mark Halperin,
author of Falling Through the Music
Joseph Powell has published three previous collections of poems and three chapbooks. His book of fiction, Fish Grooming and Other Stories from March Street Press, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. He teaches at Central Washington University and lives on a small farm with his wife and son.
The cover painting, “Spring Bloom,” was created by Cynthia Krieble as part of a series that depicts the scrub steppe landscape of central Washington. Her paintings are often explorations of color, texture, and pattern, found within a small section of landscape. Her work is handled by the Linda Hodges Gallery in Seattle and has been featured in The Culture of Hope: A New Birth of the Classical Spirit by Frederick Turner (1995). “Spring Bloom” is in the collection of Tom and Mary Lynn Vance, Sammamish, Washington.