https://www.albany.edu/offcourse
 http://offcourse.org
 ISSN 1556-4975

OffCourse Literary Journal

 Published by Ricardo and Isabel Nirenberg since 1998


 

Poems by Tim Suermondt

 

SEARCHING AWAY

In a somewhat diffuse manner
which provides for the charm

of anything being found
like poking in the dark

with a dowsing rod and striking
the hull of a lovely sampan.

A hint, a hope, a dream,
the lists of the never ending

covering every human being
that ever was, will ever be

like medieval armies pouring
over a castle’s walls to conquer

the everlastings waiting patiently
in the courtyard of magnificence.

 

 ANOTHER PORTRAIT

          in love whenever women fed me welcomeness
                       —Antonio Machado

In those days
how could either of us have said no?
We realized the welcome couldn’t last
but as long as it did it was paradise—nothing
wrong with ourselves and the world.
At the precise moment it ended we grabbed
our belongings, kissed and went separate ways—
so in love that some of the trees danced around
us, in exaltation.


Tim Suermondt’s sixth full-length book of poems “A Doughnut And The Great Beauty Of The World” will be forthcoming from MadHat Press in 2021. He has published in Poetry, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Georgia Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Stand Magazine, Offcourse Literary Journal, december magazine, On the Seawall, Poet Lore and Plume, among many others. He lives in Cambridge (MA) with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.



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