Two Poems by Robert Morgan

For the September Red Eft video, our guest poet is Robert Morgan.

The minute I read Morgan’s “Brownfield,” I dog-eared the page. I knew I'd go back to it someday, for it spoke to my belief that we 
might find grace in wounded places. In fact, I’d once created a painting of my own that it immediately evoked, a work I titled Landfill.  

I merged that image with Robert’s telling words for this first piece on the video.

The second poem, “Jar Fly,” offers its grace to a small often-ignored insect: the mysterious cicada, who—like us—creates 

love ballads.

                                                                                                                            —Suzanne

[For more about Robert Morgan see the bio and links below.]

“Brownfield” and “Jar Fly”

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Brownfield

The lot that’s poisoned by a spill

of toluene or gasoline

and tons of industrial swill

and drops of mercury dispersed

among the bits of asbestos

and rusting nails and tangled coils

with scattered beads of Styrofoam

all tossed among the posts and beams

of rotting wood and toads of grease,

exploded garbage bags and inks

on asphalt floes, and silty sinks,

is touched in one remote spot by

an ironweed’s purple mystery.

Jar Fly

The cry is more a seethe than song,

high in the oaks, a call at once

bone-dry and juicy, blast so loud

it seems a thousand rattlesnakes

are giving furious warning,

so wild it’s near impossible

to spot the source. The insect, called

cicada in most places, here

was known as jar fly, since the kids,

if they could catch one, sealed it in

a jar and watched its finger-small

anatomy vibrate inside

the amplifying bulb to light

the evening calm with serenade,

with fanfare, rasping anthem.

But what was usually found in woods

was not the tiny rock star itself

but just the husk of skin it shed

before it soared into the trees

to rock the lazy summer breeze

for hours on end with love ballad.

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 “Brownfield” and “Jar Fly” were published in Terroir (Penguin Books, 2011).  

Robert Morgan is the author of fourteen books of poetry, most recently Dark Energy (Penguin Books, 2015). Morgan

has also published nine volumes of fiction, including Gap Creek, a New York Times bestseller. Among numerous awards, 

he has received the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and fellowships from

the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations. Born in Hendersonville, North Carolina (where he’d collected cicadas, himself, as a boy), he later moved to upper New York where he’s taught at Cornell University since 1971. 

For more about Robert Morgan, visit the author’s website: http://www.robert-morgan.com