3 poems by FPL Poetry Series poet Richard Peake

FPL Poetry Series presents a reading with featured poets Richard Peake and John Gorman on Wednesday, January 30 at 7pm. A native Virginian, Richard Peake became a Texas resident after retiring from the University of Virginia’s College at Wise. He published early poems in Impetus alongside John Ciardi and in The Georgia Review. Collections of his poetry include Wings Across… and Poems for Terence published by Vision Press, which also included poems of his in A Gathering at the Forks. He published Birds and Other Beasts in 2007. A member of The Poetry Society of Texas he is published in numerous books and journals including the Pushcart Prize nominated Shine Journal. A life-long naturalist, a father and grandfather, he teaches birds, Shakespeare, and writing in OLLi.                         

 

 

 

 

Finding Hidden Beauty           

Shangri-La Shack, May 2012 

Like a shadow moving through brush

a small creature eludes scrutiny

of a boy using old binoculars.

Following growth on the ditch bank

this chase continues for what seems hours

until the skulker lights on a branch

revealing a pastel sparrow

crest raised, an inquiring gazer

who can’t resist a closer look

at the binocular bug eyes

of the creature chasing it.

The boy eyes the buffy breast band

on the delicately lined breast,

its stickpin, the soft grayish face.

Knowing this creature new to him

causes trembling excitement

as he thumbs pages of his guide

for the picture he remembers.

Finally, there it is, the bird

flies from the page—Lincoln’s sparrow,

not thought to be here, the book says,

not wintering in Virginia,

but there it is, still sitting where

light reveals its muted colors,

a quiet charm always thrilling him

whenever Guy meets it again

to imbibe its pale soft beauty

as he shares with others the knowledge

this secretive, furtive sparrow

spends its winters in concealment

where they have never thought to look.

~Richard Peake

 

Rock Dusk                           

Enigmatist, Vol. 7, July, 2012 

Looking into myself

I try to identify the layers

accumulated under the skin,

deposits from my late Cretaceous

or my Cenozoic. I chip at the rock

although my personal geology

is told in disconnected stories

seemingly lost in a murky void—

 

not eons, but years seem ages

I seek to remember

to draw bones of being

from the rock face of dead times

encased in old strata

many radiant with happy moments

others dark and heavy with guilt—

herbivore and carnivore fossils.

 

Through these layers of life

run crevices through which flow

the river of  the past, its streams

carrying their load of sediment

into the light of the present

where I sift among sand and stone

to find remnants of earlier life—

a paleontologist of ego bones.

 

~Richard Peake

 

 

They Couldn’t Wait                         

HCC-NW College Review, Apr., 2012 

The Dodo bird hadn’t heard

men thought it

absurd

            to see

                        but not to eat.

 

The Dodo lacked prescience

he didn’t know

how many hungry jowls

liked chicken dinners

and

       wouldn’t wait

                  for Col. Sanders. 

 

~Richard Peake