At Hald Hovedgaard Estate-Afternoon Swim

← v10n1, Spring 2011

To get the song out of my head

I take the boat and ride into the center

of the lake. It is against the rules

but as the light that shines

through oak leaves falls

in patches of huge brightness,

I float and in the water hear

one thing. This cantata is

“Mein Herze Schwimmt in Blut.”

It takes real blood to silence

beauty. The way it fills my ears,

rushing inward toward nothing.

music solitude nature

David Keplinger

David Keplinger is the author of three books: The Prayers of Others (2006), winner of the 2007 Colorado Book Award, and The Clearing (2005), both from New Issues Poetry & Prose, as well as The Rose Inside: Poems (Truman State University Press, 1999), chosen by Mary Oliver for the T.S. Eliot Prize of that press. He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. He is also the author of World Cut with Crooked Scissors (New Issues, 2007), which he co-translated with Danish poet Carsten Rene Nielsen. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, Florida Review, AGNI, Nimrod, and Minnesota Review. He currently teaches at American University in Washington, D.C.