To launch our Spring 2025 blog, we have some poetry with a hint of post-winter blues. The timing couldn’t be more right for this musical walk through the woods, and we’re honoured to feature this poet from rural Georgia. More next week, but for now enjoy…
Jazz, Fools and a Starring Role
L WARD ABEL
Groups of cranes perform loud across
what’s left of winter while St. Francis
watches below, quiet in the woods.
See, the January rains made their mark
their washings-away into waves
of din, of uproar below the dam.
I’ve been warned about noise—
that it reflects a state of atoms
the volatile life and
that beyond my wet-weather creek
all fools end badly when
unable to master their sounds.
But don’t say the scattered flocks
can’t play a starring role here
even as chaos rocks the tellers’ road
and don’t attempt to associate such
ideas like order with universal truth—
just play me some jazz.
AUTHOR BIO
L. Ward Abel’s work has appeared in hundreds of journals (Rattle, Versal, The Reader, Galway Review, Main Street Rag, Honest Ulsterman, others), including two recent nominations for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net; and he is the author of four full collections and ten chapbooks of poetry, including his latest collection, Green Shoulders: New and Selected Poems 2003–2023 (Silver Bow, 2023). He is a retired lawyer and teacher of literature, and he writes and plays music (Abel and Rawls). Abel lives in rural Georgia.
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