Two Poems By Dan Campion

Colossus
  
He’s going to fall, like Ozymandias
and all the others. That’s what giants do,
the same as anyone. They’re just like us,
though casting wider shade. I’ve met a few.
Yes, me. You wouldn’t think I’d circulate
so far above my rank. Well, think again.
I ventured there expressly to inflate
colossi egos. Most were little men.
They had so many favors to bestow,
however, I lacked power to resist.
I’m just a little guy myself, you know.
I’d rather make a fortune than a fist.
So here we lie, offshore, with poolside drinks,
my friends. Who cares what anybody thinks? 

New Year’s Morning
  
A flock of sparrows find a hedge and make
it theirs for warmth and camouflage and shade.
They never plant a flag or drive a stake.
I’ve yet to see a rival mount a raid;
the hawks and crows and owls can’t get in there,
and other flocks of sparrows don’t invade.
Although Utopias of twigs are spare,
I doubt a sounder plan was ever made.
Inside, the sparrows chatter favorite lines
from Hamlet and the King James Version, not
the lines you’d think, but melody that twines
among the words, a pagan polyglot.
The tiny prince and choir are at it now
beneath the snow that covers every bough. 

Dan Campion is the author of Peter De Vries and Surrealism and co-editor of Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song. Dan’s poetry has appeared previously in Grand Little Things and in Able Muse, Poetry, Rolling Stone, Think, and many other magazines. A selection of his poems titled The Mirror Test will be published by MadHat Press in February 2022.