Two Poems

MARK GOAD

So Fast

Nothing has ever run so fast 

as the rabbit my dog flushed 

from the bushes behind the house. 

Three, four lightning jumps across the lawn 

and gone 

into the wood beyond. My dog 

would have been embarrassed had I 

let her off the leash. She does not think so, 

and barks inconsolably, looking then back at me 

in panting disbelief, eyes dark with something like pity.

In a Wood and Suddenly

In a wood and suddenly 

a fit of praying – 

nothing extravagant, 

only a few words of greeting 

or thanks spoken by way of silence. 

Odder than this – if odd such is – 

the birds in unison quieted themselves, 

enraptured as though by the silence bespoken. 

I suppose it was their silence 

indicated my own 

which, grown at last too large, one of us 

broke – explosion! –

like a puffball beneath your toe but huge, 

shivering the air, radiant.

MARK GOAD is a poet now living on Cape Cod, southeastern Massachusetts. Born in Ohio, he has lived and studied in Chicago, Geneva, Switzerland and Boston (with sojourns in Connecticut and rural Nebraska). He has completed undergraduate and graduate studies in English Literature, German language, theology and philosophy. His work has been published in journals including Assisi, BAPQ, Epiphany, bluepepper, Decanto, Big River Literary Review, Extract(s), Crannóg, Ayris, Concho River Review, The Wayfarer, Contrary, Turbulence, Christian Century, Poetry Salzburg Review.

The Adirondack Review

WINTER 2014