Paul Grayson



A BANK IN THE WOODS

 

There was a bank in the woods I knew

In days long gone where the bloodroots grew,

Alone in the dead leaves, just exposed,

Facing the rumble of the road,

Their petals white and few and frail

Barely surviving by the trail.

For merely a minute in the spring

Was the bloodroot's time for flowering.

No other flower, no other leaf,

It was bloodroot time, so swift, so brief,

At the foot of a gaunt and sunlit tree,

For companions a titmouse and chickadee.

And the years have passed and I still know

The way to the bank where the bloodroots grow.




A prominent, longtime member of the Washington, D.C., literary community,
Paul Grayson served as a weather observer in World War II in the U.S. Air Force for four years, including two years in mainland Alaska and the Aleutian Islands.  He has a B.S. in botany and an M.S. and Ph.D. in agricultural economics.  Prior to retirement, he worked as a statistician and economist for the Census Bureau, Social Security Administration, and the IRS.  His poems have appeared in Mercury, Comment, Phoenix, Quirks, and the Statistical Reporter.  He has published research papers in the Journal of Farm Economics, Statistics of Income Bulletin, and elsewhere.  He has been a featured reader of his poetry on satellite radio and at Mariposa, the Kensington Library, and other D.C. venues.








                                    

 

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