Engaging Culture with Culture Through Acts of Creative Excellence
Déjà vu
Cicada evening on the lake.
A stand of children throw rocks from a cliff
at a three-legged dog that is too dumb to flee.
The dog looks fished: fashioned of sludge or stolen rib.
Hopping as rocks clotting the water
staccato its would-be-wounds.
Shouting as rocks shatter its image.
A rock pats its skull.
The lake top wavers. Words.
Inconsequential details.
Night falls and who is to blame?
Cicada buzzsaw oscillating
every atom in space.
After Eden, it says,
nature was given to nature,
animal to man to cancer.
Cicada sunrise.
The flies are a function.
The dog is processed by the sun.
Gardner Mounce, Poet & Photographer
It wasn’t until after his father’s death, when his mother typed out his steno pad manuscript, that Gardner became aware that his father wrote poetry. Because of the instant identity he found within the craft, his need to express, and because of its cathartic nature, he took it up as a hobby which has now become a lifestyle of long nights and awkward morning-afters.
He started doing photography around that same time.
His poetry has been published in The Claremont Review. His photography has been published in The Claremont Review and Shutterbug Magazine.
Favorite poets include: William Wordsworth, Louis Glück, T.S. Eliot, Charles Wright, Wilfred Owen and Dylan Thomas.
Gardner is a charter member of the Continuum.