LITMIR.BIZ

      Sing, Lost Soul

      Copyright © 2017 Karl Coppock. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Wipf & Stock

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-3319-5

      hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-3321-8

      ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-3320-1

      Manufactured in the U.S.A. February 6, 2018

      For Abigail

      1.

      I read a poem today that halfway in

      called me to say, almost out loud,

      Now that’s a poem!

      It was only after half my mind was jogged

      and memory stirred that not a week ago

      I’d read this poem and shrugged.

      Some poems are lovers for all seasons,

      some for just a few,

      and some, apparently, are one-night stands.

      2.

      City summer nights

      the smell of tracks

      of tar and wood

      sparks

      L clacks

      Food

      with smells exotic

      and if honest

      odd

      Strangers could

      almost

      be friends

      if words were offered

      3.

      The vanity of fear:

      the world is bent

      toward me.

      4.

      How came you, little beast, to be so feared, reviled?

      Do death and darkness truly harken to your call?

      Are you their foreguide or their footman?

      Prophet of the endless night?

      Or is it color—Is black so obvious?

      So ominous? So clear a copy of the dying light?

      Are we so simple to surmise the equation of a raven

      to the night?

      Or is there truth in superstitions that would so catechize

      our ready-to-be frightened minds

      to gasp suspiciously

      at ebon, fluttered flight?

      5.

      From a wounded side released,

      out of a body crushed,

      a free flowing of blood.

      Come, will you not hasten to his side?

      Attend this mass of flesh, this wreck,

      this carnage?

      Not if it is black?

      Wracked by grief, such as I am,

      yet I will shake my body free, for mine,

      the aching and the numbing both betray, my body