John Timothy Robinson is a mainstream poet of the expressive image and inwardness from the Kanawha Valley in Mason County, West Virginia. His works have appeared in ninety-five journals throughout the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and India.
Field-work at Seven AM
Mulberry, elm,
Maidenhair and pine.
Cedar bough—
a drowsy dowsing
in the morning hours.
See what coheres;
jotted notes, thought-scrawl.
Spear-points of Stag-horn Sumac
jut up in a humid swarm
of August afternoons.
Long Branch
No one ever told me
where old place-names begin
and others end.
There’s a clearing
almost half-way up Long Branch Hollow
where Wandering Jew and Multi-flora cover the field.
Sycamore tower there,
twenty-five, almost thirty feet.
Back under maple eaves
lie rusted things from another life.
Even though a creek winds the full length,
like some ancient river,
I always recall the first field;
no reason.
That tree-line, sky, a long meadow,
sloped slightly toward the Eastern creek.
Farther up, an old, concrete slab.
The road thereafter, engulfed in growth,
winding under forest canopy
in the secondary of shrubs,
a faint path exists
to the last clearing on Williams land.
At its deepest part,
fern-beds cover parts of the ground.
Pillars of moss extend along scales of trees.
The only time
a human face passes these rocks,
men in blaze orange
drift through morning cold
to wait and cradle death.
Older Tombstones
I saw the first, one summer day,
an older grave,
small rocks affixed
like eyes, not brick,
were pushed into a slab and set.
We walked, I forget
how far in dusk.
A barn nail’s rust,
a German name, VanSickle land
where tall trees stand.
And why this shape
that feigns a face?
Black Maple
I used to think this black tree
were diseased,
as if a fungus had taken hold
in the creases of its bark—
anomy, growing midst other trees.
So I thought.
Texture stands out,
blackened as natural as noon sun.
You can see it fifty yards away
growing in the green wall of summer,
what once appeared dead
lives now, even more, through me.