Sample Poems by Edward Byrne

Morning Fire by the Shenandoah

We live by faith in such presences.
—William Stafford

I

Dried sticks or straw twist and sizzle
   as the hard barks of narrow branches crack

beneath a slender blue shoot of campfire
   smoke lifting again into this Virginia valley

damp with river mist. Those floating
   embers dispersed in the pre-dawn dark—

like even the lingering legion of late stars
   still visible, though kept far in that vast

pocket of emptiness locked at the edge
   of the universe—glow once more before

fading into a trapped scrap of shadow
   yet left to us in this fractured end of night.

II

A quick glint of light tints a new group
   of thin clouds just showing in the distance.

Whole slopes are slowly opening up,
   one after another, unbuttoning in this dim

atmosphere hovering over everything,
   seemingly holding on only as long as it can.

Gray haze rises between these steep
   green creases to where a lone fire road turns,

a black switchback folding through one
   wooded hillside, still climbing even higher

to that frayed ridge of pines outlined
   by the red sunrise now burning behind them.

III

The sleek Shenandoah, brightening
   like a tilted sheet of glass in this initial slant

of sunlight, whispers when it passes,
   as if it has to respond to those other voices

of dawn, the first squawks or whistles
   of bird calls now sounding out an alarm

all along the valley. By noon, when only
   a few cool pools of tree shade may remain,

they’ll have quieted, and the small circle
   of earth stained when we’d doused our fire

with river water will already be as dry
   as the nest of collected kindling we had lit.

At the Artist’s Studio, 1894

From his tiny studio beside the sea, again
   he paints the approach of an ocean storm.

Already late summer in Maine, he sees
   those older trees wilting along an inlet shore,

their thin limbs lifting a bit in this swift
   and sudden current of wind. The small boats

in the bay below are rising and rolling
   with every swell, each mast moving back

and forth with a steady rhythm, swaying
   like a metronome needle, and against a gray

geometry of clouds, a stem of lightning
   zigzags beyond this staggered slope of coast,

where Winslow Homer watches once more
   as one wave after another breaks on the dark

rocks, blossoms into that flat scattering
   of white spray now flowering on his canvas.

Morning Composition

I

As though just another charcoal sketch
   stretched across any pale gallery wall,

the gray downtown skyline appears
   in silhouette against early-morning sun.

Today, as pairs of rowers scull past
   a still-darkened boathouse, this city’s

shimmering river once again brightens,
   seems to be illuminated from beneath.

II

Lined behind one another, they pierce
   the surface—every quick spear of oar

opening into a halo, defining the center
   of a circle. How easily power transforms

into beauty as each stabbing stroke
   leaves in its wake an extended ellipsis

of ovals unfolding like blossoms, white
   lilacs in a brightening field of sapphire.

Winter Pentimento

The black clot of an empty nest rests
   in one fork of this winter tree, all its

thin branches now white and bending
   under the weight of a new snowfall.

Spots of cloud cover still fill the ridge
   line, their lengthening shadows drawn

across a hill’s little drifts or flat patches
   of brown lawn that had been exposed

by this morning’s wind like vivid traces
   of an earlier layer of stain. Before long,

the vague sunshine finally fails to filter
   through even these few remaining knots

of cumulus and gives way to gradually
   changing shades of gray, as if the faded

landscape has been painted over once
   more, the stripe of horizon taken away

by feathered edges brushed under soft
   strokes in pigments granting a darker tint.