A few days before
the war started
I heard a long
program of
Debussy; it was
fitting
that the station
wasn’t clear
and fitting
I wasn’t in Berlin
or Kandahar
or Havana or Beijing
or Carthage
or Stalingrad
but
here, drenched under
Jefferson’s tree
in the middle
of old pastures
only suited
to cattle
and the scattering
of stones.
work has appeared in hundreds of journals (Rattle, Versal, The Reader, Worcester Review, Main Street Rag, and others), and he is the author of four full collections and ten chapbooks of poetry, including his latest collection, Green Shoulders: New and Selected Poems 2003–2023 (Silver Bow, 2023). He is also a composer and performer of music (as Max Able; with Abel, Rawls and Hayes; and presently with Abel and Rawls), releasing twelve albums over the past thirty-five years. Abel resides in rural Georgia.
