Tim Suermondt

Names his labs “Isaac” and “Newton”

and strolls with them

every chance he gets

in the woods and hills,

throwing them branch sticks to fetch

while he calculates footsteps

and distance, the mechanics

of speech and barks,

stepping from shadow to light,

hatching formulas of the universe

others have sorely missed,

his world a dirt road leading

to a shangri-la of infinitesimal sorts

writ large, the loveliest zero

deserving salute, “Good boys, good boys.”

 

Tim Suermondt is the author of two full-length collections: Trying to Help the Elephant Man Dance (The Backwaters Press, 2007) and Just Beautiful from New York Quarterly Books, 2010. He has published poems in Poetry, The Georgia Review, Blackbird, Able Muse, Prairie Schooner, PANK, Bellevue Literary Review and Stand Magazine (U.K.) and has poems forthcoming in Gargoyle, Lunch Ticket and Zymbol, among others. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.