Alan Reynolds explains that he began writing in 1995 "after wanting to write for years and learning that what wanted to be written were poems." After having written more than 400 poems that he didn't "throw out," he began to submit his work and has been encouraged by seeing his poems appear in Möbius, Poetic Express, PYROWORDS, The Armchair Aesthete, A Little Poetry, and other print-based and Internet publications. His personal web site was the voters' choice as the November 1997 "sizzling site" here at A Little Poetry.

Alan Reynolds lived in North Carolina, Panama, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and England before moving to Holland where he divides his time between consulting for information cost effectiveness "that helps people, their companies, and the world environment" and, as he puts it, "trying to become the sort of poet who can write what I want to get said."

Mr. Reynolds' interests in science and in animals together with his pleasure in "sharp-penned and glorious-sounded writers such as Anthony Burgess and W.B. Yeats" make him want to "report the happenings of the world while it is still beautiful."

You can learn more about Mr. Reynolds and read more of his poetry by following the link to his web site, Poems by Alan Reynolds, at the end of this document.

Deathless

Here's this Deathhead Butterfly traveling solo,
high up, slowly.  Banking on solar-guided
day flights, tracking lunar beams through the dark in
                          honeycombed flight dreams.
 
Up from Egypt, confident to her wingtips,
desert sunsets lighting her port side.  Nights flown
on the same course.  Gauging the safest glide paths,
                          dreaming the touchdown.
 
Fog-bound days logged over the slate-gray sea chop,
sturdy thorax beating down square-rigged breast strokes
til Swiss cantons stand in for whitecaps.  Cruises,
                          pressing up wing loads.
 
Light rain welcomes flight's closing leg to refuge:
vespers' vistas.  Deathhead knows honey beckons:
bulging golden beehives awaiting her drop-in.
                          Drills down to get some.
 
Two months' perfect homing is paid in sugar.
Sweet with fuel needed for last feat: laying
eggs in garden plants' shade.  Each egg grows its own
                          honeycombed flight dreams.

Copyright © 1997 Alan Reynolds

(This butterfly looks somewhat like a honeybee except it's about four times as long. It flies up across the Mediterranean to France, Germany, Holland, etc., and sometimes as far as England before refueling on honey then laying its eggs on potato plants.)