David Hunter Sutherland: Two Poems
Ground Zero | Heart Of The Fugue

Ground Zero

We are here: clover fields, forest of wine colored
leaves, an empty canteen marked by hands whose
orchestrations are civilization's impressions
of wild horses snorting in the tall grass,
lips and nostrils pulling in the moist air.

Nearer now, an oasis of bare stems,
a mountain stripped and pitted is ready to reclaim
its leg of wilderness up tree beaten thighs,
yet the ground's "élan vital" falters in belly
rolls around its core.

Ground zero, or love in the corset of a rose.
Directly above, below or at a distance time is
fading, is gone. What is the point of absence
if nothing can hide it? A warning comes, "Quarantine!
Delimit, suppress, erase."

Kismet? HAZMAT? Let the trigger fall,
Tell her, her soldier sends word,
carve this, "the men of the 49th salute you sister"
then close the curtains, the blinds, the book,
throw it all to center.

Heart Of The Fugue

Her musical omissions hide
in moist handkerchiefs and breath's
that vie intimations of an idle pride.

And how deft she habits the scene
of a chateau or chalet, pursing between
fingers a ring a key a note that

repeats its line of capricious raptures
then flits on nimble strings.
And so like a rogue to fix

one takes to the heart of her fugue,
caught beneath brooch and pin,
lodged in unrequited chords

of aesthetic decadence.
For her, not the arduous ballet
of formalized vagaries,

not the stately minuet
winding its bee-line to commitment,
but the blue art of an etude;

overture encircling vibrant rondo
careen madly around and about
her lips her hands her heart.

Poet's Biography:

David Hunter Sutherland is the author of two books of poetry, Between Absolutes, published by Menace Publishing, and the forthcoming book, Steel Umbrellas, to be published by Archer Books / Cadmus Editions this winter. His work has appeared in The American Literary Review, The Hollins Critic, The Northern Michigan Journal, The Reader (Oxford University), The Cortland Review and The Midwest Quarterly. Editor for Recursive Angel, his awards include a nomination for a Pushcart Prize.