Glynn Monroe Irby lives in Brazoria,
County, Texas. He carries a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from the
University of Texas, Austin, including earlier studies at the University of Houston,
the Brazosport College, and Edinburgh University, Scotland, with subsequent
graduate studies in architecture at the
University of Houston. Irby is the graphic designer and
co-author of the book, 3 Savanna Blue,
the graphic and cover designer of many
other books, and has displayed and marketed photographic and poetic art for homes
and offices. As a writer, Irby has been published in both the Houston
and Austin poetry festival anthologies as well as Sol Magazine, Borderlands
Texas Poetry Review, The Spiky Palm, Galaxy Journal,
Curbside Review, Poetz e-zine (New York), HIP,
and others; Irby has been an invited poet to many
reading venues in Texas, is a member of the Galveston Poets’ Roundtable, the Circle Way Poets, the Poetry
Society of Texas, the Gulf Coast Poets, and was selected in
2006 as one of the “Bards of the Bayou.” For many years, Irby has been a
manager, buyer, and professional interior planner in his family-run furniture
and design business.
Look for Glynn Irby to be a reader at the FPL Poetry Series reading on Wednesday, July 18th at 7pm. The Friendswood Public Library carries 3 Savanna Blue. Ask for assistance at the reference desk.
Tall Grasses
Can
you hear that sound
of
tall grasses in the wind,
that
sound of decades-hay
before
the final shocks are made?
Listen
to the whirling overhead
of
golden crowns in the sky,
the
sound of grain heads
yielding
their seeds into the frantic air.
Listen
to the sound of shadowy things
harbored
inside the bramble,
and
that bursting sound of cracking
through
unyielded early stems.
Listen
to the raging of change
through
my soul,
the
sound of breaking cane
and
the shattering of my secret places
as
you clearly pierce the last
of
my perimeter reeds
onto
the outer boundaries
of
my dispersing reservoirs.
Glynn Monroe Irby
White and Grey Dominiques
— from my father’s farm stories
When
night comes, some chickens
go
to the woodhouse, others fly
to
branches of the apple tree.
Now
and then after midnight,
the
sly weasel with razor teeth,
quiet
on the balls of his feet,
sneaks
up along the creek,
slips
under the hawthorn hedge,
and
climbs the bountiful chicken tree,
takes
his pick among resting hens.
Each
morning when leaves
are
wet with dew and I start
my
long walk to the schoolroom,
I
watch for blood feathers
in
the clover bed.
Glynn Monroe Irby
Sailing Together
Steering
our chalk-white catamaran
toward
rising constellations,
we
slip through the scattered sea
beneath
a patterned sky,
leaving
the sun in our wake.
Sailing
in line with moon-tides,
cross-grain
to ghostly grey passages
of
young pelagic jaegers, we attend
to
combinations of changing
currents
and wind direction.
We
listen for the cry of laughing gulls
or
the whisper of a shore break
as
we delight in the exuberance
of
blood pressing through our veins,
engage
in an echo of emotion,
experience
the chorus of heaven,
and
the thundering voice of God
in
the sudden electric storm-rage
before
morning.
Glynn Monroe
Irby
Knowing the Tides
She
advances straight
into
my channel access,
then
recedes through
the
swelling sluice
toward
the open sea
once
again.
Still
in the morning
her
fresh water-beads
collect
on the dew-lips
of
my over-edging grasses
before
slipping back
into
the stream.
She’ll
then ascend
into
the anvil clouds
to
flash violently back
into
the dark waters
of
the open ocean
once
again.
Glynn Monroe
Irby
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