Friday, May 10, 2024: L. Ward Abel's "Funnel"
L. Ward Abel’s work has appeared in hundreds of journals (Rattle, Versal, The Reader, Worcester Review, Main Street Rag, others), and he is the author of four full collections and ten chapbooks of poetry, including his latest collection, Green Shoulders: New and Selected Poems 2003–2023 (Silver Bow, 2023). Abel resides in rural Georgia. Funnel Conjured: a 1979-moment as I stepped from the boat at Calais when the Bering Strait was strangely lit in the distance and in a trice was sliced ahead at an edge of the super-landmass into infinite sections. There were no lines on the ground showing passage to or through that big continent. It’s water or land that always turns us back, or mountains like blood that hover. But maybe green bridges of soil stretch out beyond, I thought— the funnel that fed and opened a halved planet. I laughed. I walked. © 2024 L. Ward Abel