Sequences: Dark and Light by Nolan Zavoral

Poetry
36 pages
8.5" x 7" single signature with hand sewn binding
Published 2012

Sequences: Dark and Light is poetry finding equilibrium. It is a balance of humor and seriousness, youth and age, and optimism and pessimism. With a total of 15 poems broken into three sections, each poem is a personal narrative of universal experiences. The poems follow a sequence of surgery, recovery, and life lived fully in the years that follow.

What Everyone in Rehab Knows

That death is metaphor and reality.
So Margo dices her husband's pork chop until

it rolls in shredded waves on his plate, which he
pushes away. "You have to," she tells him. Then,

despairing, "He's losing weight again."

Mike kisses the crown of his wife's head, says,
"Hi, Babe," sits while she finishes her meal in slow-

motion in a wheelchair. He says they live on a lake,
that this winter through binoculars he watched

a goose thrashing, its legs frozen in the ice. Mike
tried but couldn't reach it. Instead he watched bald

eagles alight nearby, wait for the goose to exhaust itself, then attack, one more death observed by

the helpless.