Issue > Poetry
James Silas Rogers

James Silas Rogers

James Silas Rogers is editor of New Hibernia Review, a journal of Irish Studies. His chapbook Sundogs was published by Parallel Press in 2006.

Scenic Overlook

--for Seán L.
Over mullein stalks and red cedar
that clutched the limestone slope,

a cast of buzzards came dealing
themselves into our day. They poured

across the bluff tops, wheeling
like a skater's silent blades on ice.

Sometimes the ground falls away
and a single thing—a toothache,

a flat tire, a sudden love—
displaces the rest of the world.

Eight scrawny silhouettes left
us wordless, filled the sky.