Tim Suermondt



TRAMPING

Putting on my best pair—my only pair
of walking shoes

and watching my wife make sandwiches,
the knife smeared with mayonnaise

coming down on the bread, hibernation
fading like a city train’s whistle passing

by on a clear night, so many adventures
lining up now to keep us busy.


WHILE THE WAR CONTINUES SOMEWHERE

Pizzas bake in the ovens,
swans patrol on the lakes,
the red sacristy in the old church
continues to lose its pigment—

and I’m stopping here.

The war will go on long enough
for me to pick up the thread—

and those baking pizzas are as lovely
as things can possibly be.




Tim Suermondt is the author of TRYING TO HELP THE ELEPHANT MAN DANCE ( The Backwaters Press, 2007) and JUST BEAUTIFUL from NYQ Books, 2010.

He has published work in Poetry, The Georgia Review, Blackbird, Able Muse, Prairie Schooner, PANK, Bellevue Literary Review, Stand Magazine (U.K.) and has poems forthcoming in The James Dickey Review, Gargoyle and Hamilton Stone Review, among others.

He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.
 
 
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