Two Poems by Don Mager

May Journal:  Saturday, May 18, 2013

Old colleague--stalker--pal--the heat climbs
down to the yard.  It says how glad it
is to be back.  It grabs gulps of sun
and splats them down to wilt tomato
towers and pungent beds of herbs.  Okras
limp in shame.  Heat knows its way around
the yard and remembers where to scorch
the grass and how to press hot irons on
granite stepping stones.  Its first bully
day back on the job's a farce.  Humid
air swells its lungs.  Haze swells its clouds--clouds,
their cloudburst.  The brief shower turns
to face evening with slaps of cool shade.
Okra resurrections stand up straight.



November Journal:  Thursday, November 7, 2013

In a shower of gold, sunlight sweeps
back the heavy drapes of fog.  Sweetgum
trees flare their cry curry saffron stars.  Red
oaks tower crowns of umber flames.  The
regiment of Bradford Pears strides out
in claret uniforms.  Reclusive
Redbud trees huddle whispering dry
lentil pods like eels dangling beneath
mango-peach hued leaves.  The Willow Oaks'
dried mustard yellow leaves trickle down
feathers.  Like kids at a holiday
tow store window, eyes can't drink up all
the dazzlement.  Color goes on and
on from toe to tip.  From rim to rim.

Don Mager's chapbooks and volumes of poetry are:  To Track the Wounded One, Glosses, That Which is Owed to Death, Borderings, Good Turns, The Elegance of the Ungraspable, Birth Daybook, Drive Time and Russian Riffs.  He is retired with degrees from Drake University (BA), Syracuse University (MA), and Wayne State University (PhD).  He was the Mott University Professor of English at Johnson C. Smith University from 1998-2004 where he served as Dean of the College of Arts and Letters (2005-2011).  As well as a number of scholarly articles, he has published over 200 poems and translations from German, Czech, and Russian.  He lives in Charlotte, NC.