Fred Marchant, author of The Looking House, reflects on Gary Whited’s Having Listened musing: “What does it mean to listen to stillness, to the wind passing overhead, to horse hooves galloping in a pasture, or even to a barn door that blows slightly open, its hinges creaking? In these carefully crafted and exquisitely meditative poems, what is listened to are the sounds of the prairie ranch of the poet’s childhood, but underneath their Montana landscapes, these poems offer us an ongoing inquiry into the nature of listening, what it asks of us, and what it gives in return. Gary Whited teaches us that deep listening is in effect a prayer, a gathering and focusing of our attention, that sometimes lets us hear the mystery of being whisper back.”
Below is a new selection from Having Listened. We hope you enjoy. Look for Having Listened wherever books are sold, including Amazon, B&N and on Kindle, Nook, and Kobo formats. Visit our Store»
Horses Could Take You There
If I could remember it and the names of the horses—
But I don’t until stuck in traffic on the Jamaicaway
And the Red-tail lands on a nearby limb
The horses’ names start to come back
Goldie, Red, Lightning, Lucky, Blue, Babe and Spike
The young Sharp-shinned I killed at the creek back then
Shooting BB’s, again and again, the young hawk perfectly still
Sound of my mother’s accordion the only thing that soothed
If I’d ever believed in a god, this would be the time to unfold it
Travel to the other world was possible according to Parmenides
Horses could take you there
So quiet, the way Spike loped across the summer pasture