Reading Wallace Stevens at Pen Park by Stuart Gunter

Photo of trees reflecting in lake — Photograph by Fred Wilbur

Building rituals out of nothingness,

I’m sitting on a park bench, reading

Wallace Stevens on a sunny day

when the flashing shadow of a crow

darkens my library book.

Perfect, I think.

Where are the tigers? Where the red weather?

I am a drunken old sailor dreaming and asleep.

Where are they?

In the grudging light that asked for day

the mothers look around, covering their

startled babies’ ears. We pick and choose

our indignations.

Stuart Gunter is working toward a Master’s Degree in Mental Health Counseling at Longwood University and lives in Schuyler, Va. He likes to paddle the Rockfish River and play drums in obscure rock bands. His poems have been published in Poet Lore, Hiram Poetry Review, Appalachian Journal, The Madison Review, and Into the Void, among others.