Richard Weaver is a retired reference librarian, teacher and archivist who worked for 17 years at the third oldest Jesuit college in the States - Spring Hill College, Mobile, Alabama. He has been writing since the mid 60s and published his first poem in April 1975 via Poetry Magazine. He remains a founder of the Black Warrior Review.
In every word a color. In every color a story whispered, dark prayers. In this story . . . an apple turns its back on the ripening sun. Should blackbirds dream of black light on a moonless night? Should the empty glass return absinthe’s lost memory? Should an evergreen resurrect its golden branches in absentia? Should the blue mountain admit its fear of rising water? Should wind default on its debt to moon? To you? Should light not confess its tryst with her brother, the half-moon? Should the windmill behead the storm’s knighted clouds? Should silence pass through itself through dark fire to despair? Should midnight mock the moon’s myopia? Its pocked complexion? Should the wound not divorce the bleeding scalpel? Should a hand hold its fingers accountable and open the palm’s oyster? Should the river listen to the shore’s elegy? Or shimmer in eulogy? Should the doe acknowledge the arrow’s craftsmanship, and give thanks? Should water make any effort to know its neighboring cloud? Should this sentence disgorge letters littering its throat? Should indifference care? Or lethargy work out with a trainer? Should wine drink from the sommelier’s bruised lips? Should the moon warm its powdered face on the sun’s fevered brow? Should the moon drown in the sea’s unfettered love? Should the sun lose its sense of smell? Should the ocean fall back in full retreat into the armless waves? Should the sun swoon, unfulfilled in the moon’s embrace? Should hand acknowledge its kinship to foot but not the unreachable itch? Should the left ear listen to what the right ear knows as silence? Should the mule accept the yoke’s lame apology? Should your eyes savor the bitter memory of another’s departure?