Donald Coonrod is a physician with a poetry avocation. His poetry has appeared in Coffee Press Journal, Pegasus, Prairie Poetry, Between Kisses, Ygdrasil, Mid-America Poetry Review, and Contemporary American Voices, among others.

His first chapbook, Breathing Cup (Finishing Line Press), an elegant collection of fine poems, is available via Authorsden.com (signed copy) or at Amazon.com.

You can find more of this extraordinary poet's work throughout the pages of A Little Poetry and via the links at the end of this document.

A Country Spring

How soft the evening air is,
even for Spring.
 
I roil in it, a kid again, jumping
up and down as it flows
 
over fields, through my window,
second floor, turning all the
 
landscape green--in it a sweet
scent of clover, tang of
 
freedom--exciting my soul,
and if I were fourteen again, I'd
 
rush out, wrap it with all its
ambiguities around me--follow it with
 
every sense in my body--into eternity.

Copyright © 2009 Donald Coonrod

Phantom

I remember she wrote
in such beautiful script,
 
every rounded figure
seemed to speak of love,
 
somehow unfulfilled but so
powerful, it had a life of
 
its own--I drew back as I read
her sublime words, knowing I
 
could never be a part of that--
and it struck me mid-paragraph--
 
I didn't even know her name, only
felt her web of beautiful longing words,
 
and world of men she carefully drafted,
embraced, somehow quietly absorbed
 
into her memory.  Loved briefly in their short
lives,  they vanished--never to be seen again.

Copyright © 2009 Donald Coonrod

Warm Snug Place

Tingle of tinsel,
  Christmas trees
  dressed up
   with nowhere to go,
 
Long shadows, monotonous,
  black and white checkerboard
  of frozen bubbles in the creek.
 
We're locked
  in a warm coil,
  perverted seeds
  waiting juicily in
  winter's ground.
 
Glancing sun
  will come again,
  with soft lips
  of women singing.
 
But now is winter's discontent,
  and joy, a warm snug place.

Copyright © 2009 Donald Coonrod