Pastoral The long night walks with slow and measured steps across a field to meet the coming dawn, his pockets filled with secrets of the dark, soon to be spilled beneath the rising sun— a pile of fur between two rows of beans, some of them gnawed and some of them pristine, and barefoot prints on moist and furrowed ground that disappear in stubble past the fence around the garden, but the mystery for me is not who came or where they went, but that the curving earth forever bends away and down behind the distant rim and gives no clue to where the dark of night has gone without a backward glance or thought but just a wink and kiss on morning’s cheek, and not one word of what the moon has wrought
Joel Glickman is Professor Emeritus of Music at Northland College, having retired from full- time teaching in 2017. He still teaches at Northland occasionally, part-time. His poems have appeared in Aji magazine, Speckled Trout Review, Jerry Jazz Musician, Spitball Magazine and Minor Trips Digest. He is a clarinetist, banjo player, recorded singer-songwriter and a once avid but now occasional fisherman. He and wife Susan live in Ashland, Wisconsin.
Grand Little Things 