March 4, 2016

Three Poems By Don Mager: "January Journal: Friday, January 18, 2013", "March Journal: Saturday, March 16, 2013", "September Journal: Wednesday, September 11, 2013"

Don Mager is a retired university professor who has published several books of poetry.  He was the Mott University Professor of English at Johnson C. Smith University from 1998-2004, where he served as Dean of the College of Arts and Letters (2005-2011). He has published more than 200 poems and translations from German, Czech and Russian poets, including “Us Four Plus Four,” an anthology of translations from eight major Soviet-era Russian poets..  He lives in Charlotte, NC.







January Journal:  Friday, January 18, 2013  

Dawn’s smoothness spreads its dark contralto
satin from road shoulder to shoulder.  
Its soprano silk lilts a silver
vocalise on car windows staring
out from driveways.  Still snuggled under
shadows, sidewalks and brick porch-steps
mask surreptitious treacheries.
The front door sneaks a peek out, retreats
and chooses prudence.  The pair of Doves
chooses instead to flutter down through
the gray light.  They tandem-bob and pick
old seeds from the frosty grass. Dawn seeps
through to streak copper-tan glisters from
tail to head on each bird’s stately back.


March Journal:   Saturday, March 16, 2013  

Siesta hour hums.  Beneath the eave
hooks, the breeze sings lullabies to wind
chimes—both sets.  The smaller set replies with
alto four-note riffs.  The large five-foot
stainless rods intone Buddhist chants.  The
breeze’s words are of sun warmth, wafting
unperturbed from the broad clean sky, where
silent silver planes drift north and west.
A bright flash in the bare pecan tree
unveils a pair of eastern bluebirds.  
Flicking wings of sky, the male lifts his
plum-white throat.  His aria trills joy.
His mate sits unperturbed.  Another
hour draws siesta’s stretched hour out.


September Journal:  Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Shining their oriole cartoon brass
horns, the Angel’s Trumpet Tree blares from
its twelve foot high silent perch, like a
Peruvian Baroque mural, down
to earth as if to raise the dormant
spirits of the dead.  Lit in Lima
greens, its clusters of leaves aspire
to be comical giant holly sprigs.  
The trumpets gape their hushed succulent
throats calling out to midnight: Send us
your best moths.  Let them have their dance.  The
afternoon sun stares, while with utter
disregard, draped in their own yellow
flames, Monarch Butterflies zig-zag past.

~Don Mager

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