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Writer's pictureIPM Team
Jun 181 min read

All Morn Sun | Geoff Oelsner


A photo from deep in grass with the rising sun piercing through the top of the grass. Overlayed is a poem by Geoff Oelsner titled "All Morn Sun" that reads: All morn sun pours out its jugs of honey; / glugs over the townscape. / Summer sun heats up the panhandles, / the hardpan of Texas, Oklahoma. / Amazing Grace sits for an interview / with you in the sun. // All morn mansions face the sun. / Their windows gorge on light. / Sun thumbs through rows of sorghum and corn; / inscribes a red highway / to the middle of your heart, Cahokia*. // All morn sun lances down into / the silverwork of Ozark lakes-- / Beaver, Bull Shoals, Table Rock-- / light strikes the bright / beveled waves. // Are we bent under our parasols / of paperwork? Shut up in an old / coffeepot? Lost on the steppes / of abstraction? Somewhere under / the desk asleep, the blinds stuck? // All morn the shofar* blares; / the Fool stands in his sunpool / with all gold in the world. / All morn sun erases his face, magnifying his smile. | *Cahokia: site of the Cahokia Mounds, a settlement of the middle Mississippian Culture (c. 1300-c. 1700) near East St. Louis, Illinois. The more than 85 mounds here had temples and the homes of chiefs built on them. The largest mound is 100 feet high with a base covering 17 acres. The entire complex is the largest earthwork in the Western Hemisphere. *shofar: ram's horn instrument used in Jewish ceremonies.

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This poem was included in IPM's June Newsletter.

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