From Artist Zach Baker @https://www.instagram.com/studio.zachlectic/
Dark Horse brings Poets and Artists together to further encourage Poetry and the Arts in the Appalachian region (and beyond) and to support Coal River Mountain Watch. For electronic publication information contact studioappal@gmail.com
The sparrow is on the pulpit of a small branch
which curves up slightly at its end.
I saw it fly and land and survey what it saw
including me looking out the screen door,
caught by its flight and landing,
its sense of not staying too long.
Now, a robin walks beneath the empty
pulpit and likewise is gone as if the sermon
of the day has something to do with impermanence,
how a moment can fit together and disappear
without that sense of loss, of bowing at what’s
been given however briefly forever lasts.
-Byron Hoot
I have stood in front of mirrors
enough to make a history.
To know who I see is not
who has been nor will be.
Like all histories, the facts
are joined to stories
that dip in and out of time,
dreams and memories,
that awakening reality the oxymoron
of existence. Sometimes it’s hard
to say, acknowledge who I see reflected
is me. I know, though, if eyes look into eyes
sometimes what is concealed is revealed –
for a moment,
longer,
for a lifetime
another mirror passed by.
-Byron Hoot
The first felt air on the body is a baptism, the way the sky, foregrounded by horizons – north, east, south, and west – is holy communion,...