Ken Weisner

Get Well Card

           For Doug V.

Trespass.
Low tide,
wade out
on the rocks.
Use a 4-3.
You told me:
get out over
your head.

Let out
the breath.
Go straight down
deep; you
might need
weight. It’s
murky black
down there—

feel your way,
get your hand
under a jagged
shelf—you’ll get
the hang of where
they hide;
pry—then bag it,
scramble back

up the cliff
without being
seen…
then pound
the hell out
with hammers;
start the fire,
grab the breadcrumbs

and guitar.
It’s a feast
for the ages.
The drive
to make it happen?
Other people
clock it in, Doug.
But you—are life.

It’s just what
you’ve always been.

 

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Bio:

Ken Weisner is a poet, teacher, and editor, living in Santa Cruz, California. He has published his work widely in national journals including The Antioch Review, Seneca Review, The Brooklyn Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, and others. His first full length collection, The Sacred Geometry of Pedestrians, was published in 2002 by Hummingbird Press. Weisner won numerous awards for his fifteen years as editor of Quarry West magazine, a national literary journal published out of Porter College at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He is now a contributing editor at Red Wheelbarrow, De Anza College's literary journal. He is also a French horn player, a baseball lover, and the father of two teenage sons.

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