Dragons: Poems

Tough and tissue soft, loose blossoms open for a while to sense, whatever slant of daylight comes, then close to cold in a slow wince. Dragons is a sonorous, sensual collection of poems from Devin Johnston, "one of the finest craftsmen of verse we have" (Michael Autrey, Booklist). Attentive to both the physical world and our place within it, his arresting images of nature and human life ring with quiet power. An elegy for a ten-year-old hen; a fourth grader seeing a fox, his "fur waistcoat immaculate"; the sound of neighbors arguing set against the "pallid flames" of the setting sun. The scenes that Johnston presents come together to form a resonant, restrained meditation on life's journey and "the feeling of time."