Reprieve
Words & phrases, pour down
so hard my hand cramps
from taking dictation.
I go for a walk
at the park along the river,
rolling my shoulders,
wondering how anybody
ever completed a first
paragraph, when I see
a lanky young man
playing frisbee golf with pals.
He looks like Abe Lincoln,
minus the tall hat
& funeral suit, River Styx
wrinkles not yet
scoring his cheeks.
The wood-chopping Abe,
country-boy Socrates,
sleeves rolled up,
the ax-power in his frame
sending his golden disc
zinging over the grass
like a UFO in search
of interstellar wisdom.
A pillowy clank, the frisbee
settling into chains,
a score,
& Abe lopes after it,
joined soon by friends,
lifetimes away from sitting
alone at his desk,
torturing himself with words.
John Calderazzo’s poems and essays have appeared in Audubon, Brevity, Georgia Review, Orion, and many other journals. He’s published three books, including his debut poetry collection The Exact Weight of the Soul (Red Mountain Press, 2020) and three nonfiction books. He’s won an Colorado Arts Council Fellowship, a Traveler’s Tales Solas award, the Carolina Quarterly Young Fiction Writers’ Prize, and a residency at the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest. Calderazzo is an English Professor Emeritus at Colorado State University, where he won a Best CSU Teacher award and founded the creative nonfiction concentration in the creative writing MFA program. Nowadays, aside from writing poetry, he teaches scientists to use storytelling skills to communicate with the public.
