JOHN VALENTINE - POEMS

John Valentine teaches philosophy courses at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, GA. He has had poetry published in The Sewanee Review, Southern Poetry Review, The Midwest Quarterly, The International Poetry Review, Mudlark, and other journals. 

Walden Pond 
​  Why has no one ever invented a god of          slowness?           

-Peter Handke

A high hawk drifting in starlight, the
slow swing of clouds crossing 
the deep. Honeysuckle, the
perfume of peace, gathering 
night air in the scent of stillness. No
oars now.  His small boat 
drifting in moonlit iridescence.
Everything speaking.
A threnody woven by tongues
in the dark. Croakers,
crickets, the late loon. Words
of the water. A slight 
whisper of sweet wind, all
the risen voices 
seeming to say: Be patient, old friend.
We’re here, we’re here.

​Hummingbird

​What seems mania to you,
this whirling emerald 
stickpin, is life, my life,
gathering gold in 
wildflowers, wings whirring,
my quick tongue
speaking the language of desire.
Meadow by meadow, 
nothing, not even the wind,
can catch me. 
The owl, the peregrine falcon.
And if you think
I rush, hasten my death,
you cannot imagine
a glorious movie played so fast
that only God
with his infinite eyes can see it.

​Cardinal

​He seemed disposed to take our
confession, our
flightless sin, in a crimson cassock
of down. 
O the brightness of that prelate,
preening and 
splashing in the font of holy
water. If there is 
a heaven above the sky,
he has seen it, 
beyond all knowing. Shimmering,
he chirrs and—snap! 
Like a sudden magician he’s
gone, leaving 
only a hint of the holy in quiet,
breathless air.