A great & maybe pensive blue
heron in this black-glass office
park stalks chill captive water solar
-electric fountained to prevent
stagnation & green blooms of lawn
-rich algal slime the ponds rimmed
meanderingly by asphalt walks &
corporate campus yes she navigating
seahorse-necked a focus stalks as
if these clumps of feedy ornamental
rushes spilled small fishy streams
like axons dendrons feeling out
toward the encircling chain of lots
all rock-oil splotched & thence returning
lapping lunch-break patios an ill
-tarped way-large grill one company fires
up once per annum for a human
networking barbeque oh how she
stalks regal & provisional through
a concrete biotope of land-shaped art
-ifice & shimmering web & so moves
off from this unproductive stroller
noting no more than a firing firing in
her enchained & narrow brain her mind
widespread as the overhead waste
-dirtied & pensive maybe sky.
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Jeanne Larsen’s latest book, What Penelope Chooses: poems (2019), won the Cider Press Review Book Award. Her other poetry books are Why We Make Gardens, and James Cook in Search of Terra Incognita, an AWP award series winner. She has also published two collections of translated poems by medieval Chinese women and four novels, as well as essays and short fiction. Jeanne was the inaugural Jackson Professor of Creative Writing at Hollins University. She grew up as a U.S. Army brat; her hometown was the Cold War.
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Image By: Scott Heron