Louie Skipper: How did John Keats breathe

How did John Keats breathe

a nightingale’s song surrendering to human fear,

to death and words that remain among us,

always only this moment turning loose before flying away?

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Where is the bronze statue to the drunk

who shared a cell

in the Concord jail with Thoreau,

that singular anonymous essential man

snoring like a midwife the night

An Essay On Civil Disobedience was born?

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Is there a bumblebee too fat to learn to fly?

Copyright 2018 Louie Skipper. From The Work Ethic of the Common Fly (Settlement House, 2018)

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Louie Skipper is an Episcopalian priest and college chaplain in Montgomery, Alabama.