MARK TERRILL



UPSIDE THE MORNING


-------I catch myself catching myself
standing in the garden
in the throes of thinking
if it's beauty that gets a hold on us
or us that gets a hold on beauty.
-------Compared to the tiny green bug
crawling down my arm
my metaphysical ineptitude
is about the size of a small car.
-------I look over toward the shed
and see you standing there
tending to your seedlings
with almost unconscious devotion,
framed in an opening in the trees,
now uppity lush and leafy green
-------in the first burst of spring,
backlit and gloriously golden-edged
by the morning sun, like some kind of
highly charged radiant fauvist miracle,
and can't help but wonder just who
-------has a hold on what.

Mark Terrill is a California boy of the sixties now living a long while out of country first as a seaman going port to port (staying awhile in Tangiers, Paul Bowles etc) and setting up home with Uta in Germany where he beats out of iron impressive translations, poems, book reviews and melds nicely his love for music and literature by keeping associations with both. A new book of poems, The Salvador-Dalai-Lama Express is making the rounds.