J.P. White
Remnants of a Winter Camp with Glove Left Behind
Not that hard to get turned around in Central Park
If you don’t have your phone
And you’re running the sticky flap of July
Between hard rains looking for the reservoir
Or at least that was my mumble on a hill
Above a baseball diamond and there at my feet
The remnants of a winter camp with glove left behind.
I stood beside the bones of a fire pit at a boundary
Where the human hand almost gave out
And I thought this once thin gathering place
Was so much more than a precipice.
A fellow human had settled here for a time
And made of the cold a warming room
Hoping he or she might live long enough
To catch a game or another rain bright as a kiss along the throat.
J.P. White is the author of the poetry collections The Sleeper at the Party (Defined Providence Press, 2001), The Salt Hour (The University of Illinois Press, 2001), The Pomegranate Tree Speaks from the Dictator’s Garden (Holy Cow Press, 1988), and In Pursuit of Wings (Panache Books, 1978). His essays, articles, fiction, reviews, interviews and poetry have appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, The New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Gettysburg Review, American Poetry Review, Sewanee Review, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner, and many other journals and anthologies. He holds a BA from New College (1973), an MA from Colorado State University (1977), and an MFA from Vermont College (1990). He lives on Lake Minnetonka near Minneapolis.
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