John Timothy Robinson

The Illusion of Yellowed Transparencies

Even the wasp

descends in slowness

like a leaf,

an October, fluttered peril,

his scissor-like wings intact,

hunkered in the sun.

A spiked leg burnishes the abdomen

while high above in that blue of traceless tracks,

like curves of a sail,

a skein of web drifts in his winded wake.

Now’s the time for their retreat,

swift as angels fluttering

and poison fire at their stinger’s feet.

Dead leaves rock in curled and lifeless forms.

Wind makes music in scrapings of their movements.

JOHN TIMOTHY ROBINSON is a mainstream poet of the expressive image and inwardness from the Kanawha Valley in Mason County, West Virginia. His poetics was developed in the tradition of James Wright, Rita Dove, Donald Hall, Marvin Bell, Maxine Kumin, WS Merwin and Robert Bly, among many others.