Green Linden Press

To a Modest Friend

You did something right or good
Or thoughtful or non-harmful
Today or yesterday or last week
Or last month.

You should magnify that

As though you were Bach
Writing a Magnificat,

Or angels
Choiring to Mary,

Or a weed
Drawn up by hot sun
To branch and flower vigorously
Like one of the tall standing menorahs
Outside the original Temple at Jerusalem.

Poems by Jonathan Bracker have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry Northwest, Southern Poetry Review, and other periodicals, and in eight collections, the latest of which, from Seven Kitchens Press, is Attending Junior High. He is the editor of Bright Cages: Selected Poems of Christopher Morley (University of Pennsylvania Press: 1965; reissued 2018); co-author with Mark I. Wallach of Christopher Morley (Twayne: 1976); and editor of A Little Patch of Shepherd’s Thyme: Prose Passages Of Thomas Hardy Arranged As Verse (Moving Finger Press: 2013).

ISSN 2472-338X
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