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