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In Brooklyn near the Gowanus Canal, Gerald Wagoner has been hosting a popular reading series for several years now that he calls The Persistance of Cormorants; so it was only fitting that, with the publication of his debut chapbook, A Month of Someday, an appreciative crowd would show up to celebrate its reception.
A Month of Someday is a book of thirty-one poems that spans the month of April, and the first day of May 2020 at the beginning of the lockdown. Though the pandemic is never mentioned, when he leaves his home and family, often in the evening to take a walk alone, we get it.
During these walks, people remain at a safe distance while trees, flowers in bloom, and buildings get closer and become more familiar, concrete companions in an uncertain world. Meditative and visual, these poems remind me of koans written by a monk who’s left the confines of his cell jotting down thoughts loosened as he walks. Like a well-meaning slap meant to bring us to our senses, these poems engage us.
In the Vimeo below, Gerald Wagoner reads from A Month of Someday. Enjoy.
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The three poems that follow are from A Month of Someday.
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……………………….. ……..—4/8. 9:50 pm 48° Clear
A grumble of muffled voices
from a second floor room.
Outside the hospital, a row of
ambulances wait, idling.
Shuttered shops
spawn wind with strewn trash.
Someone in shadow
mad in disappointment,
Declaims a poem
of non sequiturs.
Across the canal it echoes
through hollow buildings.
The tide comes in heavy
on yesterday’s wind.
The pink moon untangles
itself from still black branches.
The flaccid flag’s halyard
taps the pole wearily.
It’s the same empty
night after night.
……………………—4/9. 9:50 pm 50° Clear
A place in Brooklyn to stand
to watch the stark white moon
rise so round two days late,
and ascend through tangled
Branches. In a waning wild,
The world’s end on pause,
I am a surprise to myself.
…………………….—4/29. 10:25 pm 55° Variably cloudy
Too often lately,
on my nightly
walk I make out
a form half in
shadow down
the block.
I’m sure that
he or she waits
on their dog.
But closer it’s
the work of
dark and fog.
More clearly
now it appears
to me, certainty
is most certainly
not nearly as certain
as it used to be.
A Month of Someday is published by Indolent Books. You can check it out here:
https://www.indolentbooks.com/a-month-of-someday-by-gerald-wagoner/
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Gerald Wagoner is a poet, teacher, and visual artist. Born in Eastern Oregon, Wagoner went to college in Montana, then headed east and earned an MFA in sculpture at SUNY Albany. He settled in New York City where, after teaching K–6 students as a Studio in a School artist in residence, he went to work for the Board of Education teaching art and English Language Arts. After retiring from the Board of Ed in 2017, Gerald returned to his youthful passion for poetry. As a sculptor, he has had dozens of shows from 1981 to the present throughout the country and around the world. A Month of Someday is his debut poetry collection.