Vox Populi
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Dawn Potter: For David
The world is blood-hot and personal
Dawn says.
—Sylvia Plath, “Totem”
.
Look at this early-morning flock
of scraggly titmice, five or six birdlets hen-flocked
along the bare branches, feathers blown
inside out in the March wind, even crests blown
sideways, but every dime-weight body as firm on its feet
as Ozymandias. Their world is two feet
clinging to a twig, blood
racing against cold, blood
skittering in pinprick veins. The world is personal,
Dawn says. And what heart-scalded person
would think otherwise, what battered bird
would choose any other fate than bird?
Copyright 2022 Dawn Potter
Dawn Potter directs the Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching, held each summer at Robert Frost’s home in Franconia, New Hampshire. Her many books include Accidental Hymn (Deerbrook, 2022).
Vox Populi 
Such beautiful language and cadence in this poem!
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yes, I love Dawn’s poems for the careful restraint and precision of language.
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