Poetry. Paper, saddlestitched, 28 pp.
$5.50 plus s&h
1998, ISBN-0-932412-12-2

“The poetry of Hugh Fox suggests a sort of mythical exploration of experience, how a particular moment can serve as a coming together of the eternal — cross cultural and cross experiential…” — Mahlon Coop

The Angel of Death Flies By — This Time (part 3)
by Hugh Fox

As you move toward the
end, the Great Clarity
descends and the passage
through willow shadows
becomes an old painting
on the wall of an old room
musty with old books, young
faces pass you and become
instantly old, your own roles
as father, mother, son, daughter,
uncle, aunt, friend, step out
of their skins and hang themselves
on the wall and you become
wind itself, light, the taste of
black cherry jam, the contour
of a hill, the gnarls on tree-trunks,
the souls of dead squirrels, Thank
you for Queen Anne’s Lace and
the bridges over the Cam, for
the insane perfection of the glass
flowers at the Peabody, the poverty
of the Ile San Luis, before Real
Estate moved in, thank you for
“trés gentil” and “bobagem,”
“Glückleckes Neues Jahr” and
Hiroshige’s lacey waves, Hacilar
and the asianic elements in Greek
Everything. The wind shifts and
the white angels of Winter crowd
through the sky trying to remember
where they came from — and why.

Hugh Fox is a poet/archaeologist who has taught at Michigan State University since 1968. Author of 66 books, he is a major figure in the U.S. small press world, serving as editor of Ghost Dance: the International Quarterly of Experimental Poetry from 1968-1995.