Poetry from The Literary Review



The Garden

David Daniel


          There awaits us after we are dead things
          which we do not expect or imagine.
          ---Heraclitus

Fall's last light in the last field falls now---
A yellow butterfly. A yellow leaf . . .
Nothing we haven't lost before. In the Garden

Our son speaks of the death he was born from, That distant galaxy he knows as God---To his friend,
He whispers: I am a messenger of God, are you?

You laugh: So maybe this is it---the aftermath.
Your spade shivers as it bites the earth,
And the two boys scramble for the night's potatoes.

In the west, wandering, Venus fires its brief ascent:
A yellow butterfly. A yellow leaf . . .
Nothing we haven't found before.



The Leap

David Daniel


          To souls, it is death to become water; to water it is death to become
          earth. From earth comes water, and from water soul.
          ---Heraclitus

Our son stands at the dock's edge eyeing
His other self cast on the water below:
Gulls scream, sun fires, fishes shadow
The unbearable depths, and the self-song
That calls him, calls him . . . Then his
Explosion, the glass shatter, the bottom of the leap.