Kathryn Jacobs
4th OF JULY
It isn't yet Dan's turn to understand;
his turn is coming later. All he knows
is that the sky exploded on him so
Dan thought it was vacuum-cleaner; that's
the loudest, terrible-est noise he knows,
though no one does that when he's sleeping. Then
it rained down crayon-colored spider legs
but nobody was worried, and the cracks
leaked sun-yolk though it wasn't nearly time:
It must have hurt. The whole sky splintering
emergencies like stop-lights, broken eggs:
Dan's never seen such colors, he went blind
and hiding didn't help. The wounded sky
had nobody; Dan soothed it. Butterflies –
Kathryn Jacobs is the editor of The Road Not Taken, A Journal of Formal Poetry.
She is also a professor, a poet, the author of five volumes of poetry and numerous individually published poems
(including Wordgathering). She is also the mother of Raymond Jacobs, 1987-2005. The following poems
are written (as always) in his memory. But they are also written for a new member of our circle: Dan –
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