Two Poems
Mark Blaeuer
Winter Journal: Stray Notes
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“I have now found the law of the oak leaves,”
wrote Hopkins on the 19th of July,
the year of his Lord 1866.
I, on the other hand, see only sticks
devoid of life. Pathetic alibi,
cerebral chemistry no pill relieves
in truth. Although our morning is “v. fine,”
the dog and I are weighted to a chair.
A dying larva in a chrysalis,
however, yields more energy than this
heft in a green recliner. Everywhere,
linoleum is lit with the divine
spark, so cliché, of a bacterium
to which my dog and I will yet succumb.
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Mark’s notes: ​​“This poem first appeared in Angle in 2012 and was included in Fragments of a Nocturne in 2014. It was republished in The HyperTexts in 2020.“
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Big Business
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One larva forages on leaves until,
fat with the currency of chlorophyll,
it raids a crevice, deals out the cocoon
to pupate—creeps through May and sleeps through June—
toward rollout as a moth. Instinct, the boss,
prioritizes. Second quarter loss
is outweighed by the profits generated:
two hundred fifty eggs, all silver-plated.
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Mark’s notes: “This poem was first published in 2018 at Able Muse Review. It was reprinted the same year in the Weekly Standard.”
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Mark Blaeuer lives just south of Lofton, Arkansas. He was a ranger for many years at nearby Hot Springs National Park, and his M.A. is in Anthropology. His poems (and a few translations from Spanish) have appeared in 100+ magazines, such as Better Than Starbucks, Bindweed, The Borough, Ezra, Grand Little Things, The HyperTexts, Lighten Up Online, The Orchards, Passionfruit Review, Pulsebeat, Susurrus, Ultramarine Literary Review, and Wales Haiku Journal. His collections are Fragments of a Nocturne (Kelsay Books, 2014) and Surfacing Below (SurVision Books, 2025). He’s also written a couple of history books: Didn’t All the Indians Come Here? (Eastern National, 2007 [out of print]) and Baseball in Hot Springs (Arcadia Publishing, 2016).
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