A Morning Beside the Ocean in July

This poem appears in the Summer 2019 issue of Modern Age. To subscribe now, go here.

With crowds of roses following the path
To where Aurora rises from her bath,
The rosy clouds reflected in the stream
Are deeper than the water, it would seem.

A goldfinch flies high up into the air
And battles with the atmospherics there,
Then swoops to settle on a leafless twig,
His way to feel at home in rooms so big.

The little fists of chicory unclench
Where sparrows flit and find beneath a bench
A bit of plenty spilling from the horn.
Who’d guess that powder blue could be earthborn?

Founded in 1957 by the great Russell Kirk, Modern Age is the forum for stimulating debate and discussion of the most important ideas of concern to conservatives of all stripes. It plays a vital role in these contentious, confusing times by applying timeless principles to the specific conditions and crises of our age—to what Kirk, in the inaugural issue, called “the great moral and social and political and economic and literary questions of the hour.”