Art: “Martin Nature Park Tree” by Robert Ferrier

MARTIN NATURE PARK TREE TRUNK

After we crept to the bird wall

poked our lenses through portals

and stole the souls of wrens

after we snapped the snapping turtles

their necks stretched high and frozen

as if sniffing the sun or posing

after we climbed the viewing stand

and shot the field of mounds

the red-banked stream, the tangles

and brambles and dun of dead grass

after receiving the scorn of squirrels

and following our bread

crumbs back to the lot

only then did we find our art,

a blanched dead trunk of elm

stripped of bark to bare its canvas

proud of the waves in its wood

fine grooves engraved like flowing hair

an imagined face, obsidian eye

streaked with ochre by the Lord.


About the author:

Robert Ferrier is a retired university research administrator living in Norman, OK. He received a BA in Journalism and an MBA from the University of Oklahoma. He has published a novel, The Witchery Way, at Amazon Kindle e-books at amazon.com.  He has won the Norman Tree Photo contest twice. His photo, “Magnolia Morning,” was the cover of the Summer, 2016, Dragon Poetry Review. His photo, “Diagnosis in Stasis,” was the cover of the Fall, 2012, literary journal Blood and Thunder, University of Oklahoma College of Medicine. His poems have appeared in Dragon Poetry Review, Oklahoma Today, Blood & Thunder, Crosstimbers, Westview, Mid-America Poetry Review, The Exhibitionist, Walt’s Corner of the Long Islander, and Red River Review. In 2007 the Norman Galaxy of Writers nominated him for Poet Laureate of Oklahoma.

Art: Martin Nature Park Tree by Robert Ferrier

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