And since this is a new book, I feel like I'm here
to read it to you.
I'll start with a little paragraph of thanks.
Many thanks to the University of Arizona for the provost author
support grant that assisted the publication of this book,
and many thanks to Lisa Bowden of Kore Press for her
inspired design and creation of it.
Endless gratitude to my devoted readers, which are many,
especially Beth Alvarado, especially Jane Miller,
Boyer Rackel and Jacqueline Culley,
who cheered these poems on.
This book is dedicated to my cousin, Dirk Charles
Clodfelter, 1946 to 1971, and to his mother, my aunt Marguerite
Cully Clodfelter, 1922 to 2011.
This first poem draws from one of the I think origin
myths in the German culture.
Siegfried and Brunhilda, and the title
is from you'll recognize Emily Dickinson.
A wooden way, regardless grown.
Siegfried's ash difficult way, love, is not want not.
Not shepherd's tale, not that strong-made voice wrested from
the king of scraped-clean forest forms and looming from which he
or we look away, cannot or must not.
Significantly larger still, sinewy curved West wall
gouged as apparent human figure, defined in distant circles
cut to scale.
That place where feudal hall, vanishing pointillist, semen
and blood, lover waif back--
back to Brunhilde.
Quill of quiet rasp of songs made brittle now
behind the eye, gate across lacerated field.