WINTER 2006

 


Winter 2005-6



Edward Byrne

PAINTED FIELDS

Morning arrives with a bright
blue glow of dawn leaning between

those last yellow leaves
now lingering over our green lawn.

Already autumn seems to be
creating its own competing colors,

divided plots of light arrayed
side by side remain like painted fields

arranged in a triptych on a large
canvas or like the abstract patterns

of oblong blurs stacked, one
on another, in Mark Rothko's artwork.

Hour after hour, the still
narrowing shadows of these trees

will shape the landscape,
shifting each brilliant plane of daylight

from place to place the way
gray reflections of cloud fronts stain


a sea's surface when drifting
across waves on an open ocean.


Edward Byrne a professor of American literature and creative writing, and directs the visiting writers program in the English Department at Valparaiso University, where he also serves as the editor of Valparaiso Poetry Review. Author of essays of literary criticism which have been published in various journals and book collections, including Mark Strand (Chelsea House Publishers), edited by Harold Bloom, and A Condition of the Spirit: The Life and Work of Larry Levis (Eastern Washington University Press), edited by Christopher Buckley and Alexander Long, he has had five collections of poetry published: Along the Dark Shore (BOA Editions) was chosen a finalist for the Elliston Book Award; The Return to Black and White (Tidy-Up Press) was selected by Library Journal as among "The Best of the Small Press Publications"; poetry in Words Spoken, Words Unspoken (Chimney Hill Press) won the Cape Rock Prize in 1995; East of Omaha (Pecan Grove Press) was nominated in 1999 for the Midland Authors Award; and Tidal Air was published by Pecan Grove Press in 2002. A sixth collection, Seeded Light, is forthcoming.

 

 

 

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