publishing poetry chapbooks
 


Monday's Poem
Photo by Armando Jones

John Garmon's poems have appeared in Southern Poetry Review, Southern Humanities Review, Ploughshares, Commonweal, New Mexico Humanities Review, Prairie Schooner, California Quarterly, South Dakota Review, and other journals. He teaches English at the College of Alameda, in the San Franciso Bay Area.




© John Garmon

Begin With Stone

The stone becomes a leaf
and its veins show
like winter ivy vines
on a brown stucco wall.

The leaf becomes a stone
and its hard surface
grows green with moss
when spring turns to rain.

Everything becomes
something else:
a boy a man,
a girl a woman.

The young grow old.
The old grow young.
Night becomes day.
Day turns to night.

When we speak
we use other voices.
When we listen
we use other ears.