Prolix, David Appelbaum

 

Pelican, Tim Timmerman
( monotype, gouache, & collage 10″ x 23 ½“)               

 

 

 

 

Prolix

The pearly immensities
Thoreau saw
jangle jewels of winter
at her lobes

even after sun-baked
brows give way
though not yet
spring hips

but bone-marrow dew
an elixir
for his drink
there below
there below

 

_______________ 

David Appelbaum

David Appelbaum’s feet seem fully planted in the sand, the brine of the sea, the earth, as he looks over his shoulder at other poets who have come before, not in an imitating or irreverent way, but in the confidence of forging new territory.  Where most poets seem to fall into the confessional or intellectual, his almost biblical musings seem to be more in the line of witnessing and being aware of their inner calling. Where does he conjure them, out of a nest of baby birds?  We attest to the beauty of these simple delights in uncomplicated things. It is almost as if these poems are the children of Louise Gluck and Pablo Neruda.  He makes things seem very fresh in his description of a seagull or an earlobe. One almost shivers not knowing the next turn of his mind; he moves as easily to Thoreau as anyone else. After all that reverence I was almost expecting his poems not to fly overhead like in his seagull poem, but to walk confidently upon water.