Let's stop time, Love, to see what those clouds yearn
to be, to listen to that butterfly stir the air around us,
to hear, at dusk, the stars begin like crickets, tremulous,
or feel their light begin to ripple in the lowest ferns;
let's see how skillfully the night covers this field of moons,
the way your own own look has passed the sentries of my heart,--
let's add some message twig to this nest we'd set so far apart
we only spoke with words that waited all winter in their cocoons.
Not long ago my sky was full of razors, the wind
had pried the roots of hope-- now every mountain dreams
to hold your step, every tree has begged to give you shade,--
the whole sky wakes like struck flint, a hawk reinvents the wind,
the huge valleys of the flower open their unimaginable scenes,
every clock drowns in your eyes for this world that will not fade.


§ § §

RICHARD JACKSON is the author of five books of poems, most recently Heartwall (UMass, Juniper Prize '00), Alive All Day (Cleveland State Prize, '92), a Selected Poems in Slovene, and the forthcoming Unauthorized Autobiography: New and Selected Poems (Ashland University Poetry Press, 2003).

He has also published four chapbooks adaptations from Petrarch and other Italian poets (Black Dirt Press) and a limited edition of Petrarchan poems (Aureole Press,Univ. of Toledo). His own poems have been translated into a dozen languages. He has edited two anthologies of Slovene poetry: The Fire Under the Moon (Black Dirt, '99) and Four Slovenian Poets (Aleph, '93) and edits an eastern European Chapbook series and two journals, Poetry Miscellany and mala revija. He is also the author of a book of criticism, Dismantling Time in Contemporary American Poetry (winner of the Agee Prize), and Acts of Mind: Interviews With Contemporary American Poets (winner of Choice Award).

He has been a member of the Sarajevo Committee organized by P.E.N. Int'l and has worked with various groups concerning the Balkan wars and fund raising for refugees. In 2000 he was awarded the Order of Freedom Medal for literary and humanitarian work in the Balkans by the President of Slovenia. He has received Guggenheim NEA, NEH, and 2 Witter-Bynner Fellowships, a Prairie Schooner reader's Choice Award, and the Crazyhorse prize, and is the winner of four Pushcart Prizes and appeared in Best American Poems 1997 and several other anthologies, and his poems have appeared on the internet in Poetry Daily and Verse Daily. He has been a Fulbright Exchange poet to former Yugoslavia and returns each year with groups of students. He teaches at UT-Chattanooga where he directs the Meacham Writers' Conference and at Vermont College's MFA program, winning teaching awards at both schools.