Origami As the day trembles between afternoon and evening, a salmon jumps in the river. An old woman reads verses from Dante in Guadalajara. A heart-red cardinal decorates a tree line. In Reno, a couple argue over something they will not forget. A woman stops working in a field. A spider spins its web. A man in a suit closes up his papers and locks his office door. A girl solves a mathematical equation. An Audi crosses a residential neighborhood. Henry lights a cigarette. The ghost of the Moon hangs in the vast proscenium like a stranger at a feast. A butterfly dreams of pollen. On a rocky beach, a dog runs in the shallows. A lion eats a gazelle. These events fold up like paper in the unknowable mind of God.
John Claiborne Isbell taught French and German for many years in Indiana and Texas after his Ph.D. at Cambridge University. In 1996, he appeared in Who’s Who in the World. He has a new monograph, An Outline of Romanticism in the West, with Open Book Publishers, where it is available to download for free online. His first book of poetry, Allegro, came out in 2018.
Amethyst Review 