Umbrella
A Journal of poetry and kindred prose


J. D. Smith

works as an editor and writer. His second collection, Settling for Beauty, was featured on Verse Daily and reviewed in the December 2006 edition of Umbrella.

His other books of poetry are The Hypothetical Landscape (Quarterly Review of Literature Poetry Series, 1999) and the edited anthology Northern Music: Poems About and Inspired by Glenn Gould (John Gordon Burke, 2001).  His children's book The Best Mariachi in the World is forthcoming in 2008 from Raven Tree Press.



—Back to Poetry Contents—

Introduction to Economics

Assume a world of many lenses,
each focused on its own set of facts.
Assume another lens encompasses the rest
and concentrates their powers
as, on a sunny day,
a boy's magnifying glass
is trained upon an ant.

Unless you are holding up that lens,
assume you are the ant.

 

Sea Glass

cool beads
too complete
to need a string
or each other—

they filter light
and rest smoothly,
almost forgotten,
in a hand,  

fragments taken 
to set among
other fragments,
muffled in a drawer,

jewels of second chances,
worn to new life
in the waves’
long dispensation

 

 
 
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