David Appelbaum
About the Author
I'm a hiker and biker who teaches philosophy. I edited Parabola Magazine for a decade and my poems have appeared in such places as APQ, Commonweal, and Verse Daily.
Braille
Reading a book the man
says reading a book
the words
like a fishbone
choke on life
a gasp meaning
the book falls open
the man says the book
a slip of paper
catches the wind
sails the open sky
the man says
until
he taps a white cane
on the way
Alphabet
With the crane's flight
ages flew past also
the babble of the crib
the child's zeal
then the frown
of unfounded words
then the man
in the desert of thought
alone before temptation
bent, yielding
O why do ideas
soar so grandly
with that spoon-billed
long-necked silhouette
flapping molecular north?
Why does passion
lift so thin?
This zeal to
a lone man
emerges from a cistern's
mouth one day
into blaring sun
& their majestic brace
in which all the letters
of all the words
ever to be writ
ever to be writ
are
