A philosopher-poet who sits on his back porch, shelling peas and asking what about the silent ones, the stones, “those who give themselves to feed us,” Stephen Lewandowski is a man of the soil, obsessed with gardens, lauding Munsell’s Book of Soil Color, sharing stories of tulip poplars, bees, racehorses, gilliflowers and purple cabbage heads.
Stories that leave a “rich black smear on the mudroom floor.”
Simple poems that make allusions to the Five Dynasties, to Li Po and To Fu, to farm life and family stories, to blooming pear trees and a hand touching an arm in a doorway “like a dream.”
Lyric simples to heal the urban ills that surround us.
