#john beaton

[batgovernor]

Sonnets: John Beaton, 'Wildfire'

It starts with lightning, tinder, and a gust.Smoke-jumper teams, at this stage, may contain it—clad in Nomex, ‘chuting down to dustthey rip along the fireline like a bayonet,swinging pulaskis, cleaving to clearings and creeks,drip-torching back-fires, containing each hot spotwith counter-tides of flame. They know physiqueshoned to sprint with gear may still be caughtby racing fronts and panic, so…

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[batgovernor]

Using form: Amphibrachic tetrameter: John Beaton, 'Regeneration'

Hay ripens. I sharpen my tapering scythe blade and chamfer its wafer of paper-thin steel with stone swoops; it’s hooked like a peregrine’s talon. The snaking shaft sweeps and the first swathe is side-laid beside me, clean slain. As I swing I can feel the gravid field yielding. Sheaves kneel and then fall in the breeze in formation. Their early seeds dance there like next April’s rain-showers…

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[batgovernor]

Using form: John Beaton, 'Killing a Coho'

I grip its tail, hammock its back, and swing its head down with a crack on rock, then feel its spasms judder through my hands as, with a shudder, it stills, a grand finale that fulfills some ancient impulse in my mind. Poking my finger through a gill,I cause the raker fronds to spillblood that drip drips as I carrythe silver deadweight of my quarry,my kill,toward a tidal poolthe sunset has…

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[batgovernor]

Using form: John Beaton, 'Legacy' (excerpt)

Inside his penthouse office he views his Inuit artwork, carvings from a culture reduced to buy-and-hold, then scans the evening city, his bar chart on the skyline where real estate has grown his stake but cost him bonds he’s had to break – he hadn’t meant to so forsake his parents. They looked oldthat day outside the croft house when cowed farewells were murmured as cattle lowed in wind blasts…

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[batgovernor]

John Beaton, 'Love is a Many-Splendored Thing'

Is love a beaming, eye to eye? An oath—you-only-till-I-die? A U that comes before an I? A hullabaloo-cum-lullaby? A flirt? A tilting of the neck? An art? A Machu Picchu trek back in time to that valiant peck on virgin cheek, that what-the-heck? A brace of lovebirds who embrace instead of pecking cheeks, a plaice whose eyes achieve a state of grace—as one on one side of its face? A willing ear we…

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[batgovernor]

John Beaton, 'Year-Leap'

This field in winter forms a wetland, quiet except for hushing rainfall, rushing hail, a breeze that, fussed with snowflakes, seems to sigh at the calls of robin, chickadee, and quail, and swishing noises as a buck picks through a copse of wild roses, red with thorns, briar stems, and rose hips, which he’ll chew as velvet slowly silences his horns. And then the frogs! These mudlark choristers,…

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[batgovernor]

Using form: choice of metre: John Beaton, 'Request for a Dance'

Step with me, float with me, over the floor; weave with me, waltz with me, out through the door; slide to the deck where the crowdedness clears; glide through the garden and tear off your fears. Step with me, sneak with me, down to the lake, onto its waters; the mirror won’t break; lilt in a ball gown of luminous mist; twirl till you’re breathless and need to be kissed. Step with me, skim with…

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[batgovernor]

John Beaton, 'Wolves'

John Beaton, ‘Wolves’

I’m wakened, drawn towards the ice-thin window, to witness scenes as faint and still as death. How bleak the moon; how bare the trees and meadows; sky’s pale maw overhangs Earth bleached beneath star fangs. Night’s curled lip sneers on shadows of mountains set like teeth. Two bow waves shear the median of the valley,iced hayfield yields as feral muscles glide–hoarfrost disturbed by wakes of live…

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