There was a gate,
old and green,
that swung in the wind.
No fence stretched away
on either side anymore,
if ever one had.
The gate stood alone,
open on the meadow,
a seamless drift of land.
To my eye, that gate
organized the whole field
of vision. Everything
circled around the gate,
or radiated out from it,
or passed through it.
Surely I could never think
of crossing that field
and not passing through.
There was an inevitability
to it, and a promise that,
after passing through,
something remarkable
was sure to be revealed
on the other side.

–Frederick Smock,
The Deer at Gethsemani: Eclogues
Accents Publishing

Frederick Smock is associate professor of English at Bellarmine University, where he received the 2005 Wyatt Faculty Award. He has published four previous collections of poems with Larkspur Press. He is also the author of Craft-talk: On Writing Poems, and Pax Intrantibus: A Meditation on the Poetry of Thomas Merton. His poems have appeared in The Antioch Review, The Hudson Review, The Louisville Review, The Merton Journal (UK), Poetry East, Trajectory, and other journals.

The geese have returned again to campus,
to the roof of the library where they make their nest,
where they can look out over Beargrass Creek
and the elms of Creason Park.

What we do here is of no importance to them,
except perhaps when we exclaim over them
when they deign to stroll among us,
for they have always known what they need to know.

They stroll among us like foreign royalty.
We approach them as supplicants, small offerings
in our hands, and come away marveling.
Then, we return to our studies of theoretical things.

Frederick Smock is associate professor of English at Bellarmine University, where he received the 2005 Wyatt Faculty Award. He has published four previous collections of poems with Larkspur Press. He is also the author of Craft-talk: On Writing Poems, and Pax Intrantibus: A Meditation on the Poetry of Thomas Merton. His poems have appeared in The Antioch Review, The Hudson Review, The Louisville Review, The Merton Journal (UK), Poetry East, Trajectory, and other journals.

Frederick Smock is associate professor of English at Bellarmine University, where he received the 2005 Wyatt Faculty Award. He has published four previous collections of poems with Larkspur Press. He is also the author of Craft-talk: On Writing Poems, and Pax Intrantibus: A Meditation on the Poetry of Thomas Merton. His poems have appeared in The Antioch Review, The Hudson Review, The Louisville Review, The Merton Journal (UK), Poetry East, Trajectory, and other journals.

Pigeons, their wings clasped
behind them, pace to and fro
on the window-ledge, darkly
muttering to themselves

about what we cannot know.
Even here, on the top floor
of a downtown Vancouver hotel,
with a lovely view of the harbor,

the boat-house in Stanley Park
and snow-capped mountains,
the pigeons pace up and down
in the green gathering dusk,

muttering to the gargoyles
who grin and, darkly, agree.

–Frederick Smock,
The Deer at Gethsemani: Eclogues
Accents Publishing

More from The Deer at Gethsemani:

• “I”
• “II”
• “III”
• “VIII” or “a brief taxonomy”
• “IX” or “an afternoon with Guy Davenport”

Frederick Smock is associate professor of English at Bellarmine University, where he received the 2005 Wyatt Faculty Award. He has published four previous collections of poems with Larkspur Press. He is also the author of Craft-talk: On Writing Poems, and Pax Intrantibus: A Meditation on the Poetry of Thomas Merton. His poems have appeared in The Antioch Review, The Hudson Review, The Louisville Review, The Merton Journal (UK), Poetry East, Trajectory, and other journals.

A sycamore tree
under the melting snow
becoming once again
branch by branch
itself

–Frederick Smock,
The Deer at Gethsemani: Eclogues
Accents Publishing

Frederick Smock is associate professor of English at Bellarmine University, where he received the 2005 Wyatt Faculty Award. He has published four previous collections of poems with Larkspur Press. He is also the author of Craft-talk: On Writing Poems, and Pax Intrantibus: A Meditation on the Poetry of Thomas Merton. His poems have appeared in The Antioch Review, The Hudson Review, The Louisville Review, The Merton Journal (UK), Poetry East, Trajectory, and other journals.