L. Ward Abel
L. Ward Abel’s work has appeared in hundreds of journals (Rattle, Versal, The Reader, Galway Review, Main Street Rag, others), including two recent nominations for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and he is the author of four full collections and ten chapbooks of poetry, including his latest collection, Green Shoulders: New and Selected Poems 2003–2023 (Silver Bow, 2023). He is a retired lawyer and teacher of literature, and he writes and plays music (Abel and Rawls). Abel lives in rural Georgia.
From Crescent Beach
Way out there
the gulf stream-river
steams
dreams, flows over
the great tilt
past smaller countries
within reach
warmed, green
quiet wading great fields
of ocean
of cloud, to african
beaches
or up through
celtic seas to poles
too big for
eyes.
Groanings
The woods chatter like a million skulls
cicada-full, louder than I’ve
heard
a drove, a teeming gone at sundown
replaced by aurora-silk
flags
waves, movies on hazy sheets spread
east to west,
dark
in the greening piedmont, the slope
a tilt, wide—and groaning for
fall-lines,
O the watershed, the characters living here
among and above, around these holy open
fields
alternate their sleep and wakings
then post it all to the
sky.