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[with 3 poems by Denton Loving]
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Lake Sagatagan Summer
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After evensong at the abbey, we walk circles
in the woods, weaving through deerflies
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in kamikaze flights. The cerulean warbler
mates among these trees, we’re told,
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so we keep vigil for blue flickers in the leaves.
So far, nothing. On half-submerged logs
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turtles perch like hard-shelled gods –
We canoe to the deepest part of the lake
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before we can talk about who we were
before the other existed as witness.
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Night descends, and we have to compete
with the liturgy of loons,
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but here, surrounded by water, by darkness,
is the only safe place to tell the truth.
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Denton Loving
from Feller, Mercer University Press, Macon GA; © 2025
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Last month I took a walk in the woods with my brother Bob, visiting from Montana. Here in North Carolina it was 78 and sunny, leaves still on the trees, plenty of shade. Bob wore a long-sleeve shirt rated SPF 50, sun blocking mitts, a neck gaiter pulled up over his ears, and a broad-brimmed hat. Yesterday I spent four hours with Dad at the plastic surgeon’s office. Besides freezing several superficial cancers on Dad’s scalp, she gave him the option of not treating the half-inch basal cell cancer on his nose. After all, he’s 99. What if he should choose to just ignore that cancer?
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My brother seems to be choosing to live another thirty years skin cancer free. My father seems to have chosen never to wear a hat. Bob lives in the future. Dad lives with his past. The sun shines on us all. But this is not a microessay about UV protection or dermatologic wellness.
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God sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. If you are trying to farm in an arid plain like Judea, rain is not a downer but a blessing. The threatening proposition would seem to be, The sun shines on us all. But here’s a phrase even more ominous – He lives with his past. As Linda and I drive through the neighborhood this morning, she asks me if I’m OK after I let out a deep involuntary sigh. Am I OK? Where did that come from? I tick back – we had just passed the house of a man who used to be my patient. I made a bad choice in his care, he got mad, and he went and found another doctor. Fifteen years ago. You can’t live in a small town for decades without daily reminders of your choices. You can’t live on the earth, it sometimes seems, without your past constantly poking you and calling you out.
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The other night at chorus we men sat and listened while the women rehearsed their own piece, SSAA. There is Linda, intent on the director and facing away from me, but the clear flute of her soprano reaches my heart. For one bright moment I am swept up in perfect love and peace. Tomorrow we’ll again flash our prickles, maybe argue about whether I’m paying attention or choosing to ignore her, but right now every choice I’ve ever made tastes sweet.
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So here’s what Dad didn’t choose: to be alive on the 99th anniversary of his birth. Plenty of years for that ultraviolet to penetrate and warp his squamous cells and basal cells. And even though basal cell carcinoma never kills you, it will keep on growing until it bleeds and hurts. Especially if you are someone who vows on every birthday, as if you actually have a choice in the matter, to live five more. I tell the surgeon, “We choose the knife.” I tell myself, “Choose the music.”
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This is a bit more of that passage from the fifth chapter of Matthew, Jesus speaking to a crowd of seekers who had followed up a mountainside: You have heard it said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you; that you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven: for he makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. [Matthew 5:43-45 ]
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The Octopus School of Poetry
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Yes, that they have three hearts is remarkable.
So too, the way they navigate man-made mazes.
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That their eight arms simultaneously perform
separate tasks. That they can unscrew jar lids
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even when they’re trapped inside the glass.
But of all the strange facts, I can’t get past
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their ability to squirt jets of black ink,
theatrical for sure, but an effective tactic
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to distract a hungry eel or seal or albatross –
not unlike the poem, shooting fireworks
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to ward off what haunts us. Such a nifty trick.
Almost worth the burden of those extra hearts.
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Denton Loving
from Feller, Mercer University Press, Macon GA; © 2025
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Almost worth the burden of those extra hearts.
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I try to divert my eyes from the cover endorsements when I pick up a new book of poems. You don’t read the last page of a novel first, do you? One joy of reading poetry is the sudden encounter with a line that leaps into revelation – opening a window into the writer’s heart – or into epiphany – opening the reader’s heart.
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Anyhow, I figure I know Denton Loving’s poetry from his books Crimes Against Birds and Tarp. I rub my hands together in anticipation of mountains and hollers, of creatures and musk. And this new book does not disappoint. Denton displays the naturalist’s eye and ear and sensibility; every poem is rich with place and presence. But Feller is even deeper and richer than nature. The natural landscape is simply gesso for the canvas – these poems are about the burden of heart. These are love poems, and loss poems. While the naturalist observes, questions, connects, we are permitted to observe and connect with his deepest feelings and honest vulnerability. These pages are a safe place to tell the truth.
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Denton Loving publishes interviews and reviews at https://dentonloving.com/ and has just announced a call for poems by Appalachian writers with and about disability, an upcoming anthology edited by Kendra Winchester. Denton is co-founder and editor at EastOver Press and its literary journal Cutleaf. For over a decade, he co-directed the Mountain Heritage Literary Festival at Lincoln Memorial University. He lives on a farm near the Cumberland Gap, where Tennessee, Virginia, and Kentucky meet.
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Feller is available from Mercer University Press.
You may sample Denton Loving’s prior books here in previous posts at VERSE & IMAGE:
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The Eagle and the Drone
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My soul leapt, you said when you witnessed
the eagle attack the drone in mid-flight –
the drone’s camera capturing its own finish,
the eagle cementing her reign of the sky.
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When you read this, I think you’ll know
the triumphant eagle is not a symbol
of America, and neither is the lost drone.
This is no polemic or war-time parable;
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as far as I can tell, there’s no clear wisdom
gained when we pit nature against technology.
I only know medicine men say eagles bring new vision –
like light through a lens passing obliquely
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from air into a prism’s flat panel of glass,
refracting and separating the sun’s beams –
to help us understand our complicated past
and present, to guide us through the mysteries
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of the future. That reminds me of the last trip
I made to visit you in Florida, when an eagle rose
from one of Highway 417’s narrow strips
of median as you drove me to the airport in Orlando.
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The eagle winged directly toward our windshield,
and we agreed it was a very good omen:
how she caught our eyes, how pure white her bald
head appeared before she flew into the morning sun.
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Denton Loving
from Feller, Mercer University Press, Macon GA; © 2025
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V E R S E and I M A G E 
You are planting wonderful seeds. ---B