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Poem For St. Francis

Today’s poem is by Sylvester Pollet. Sylvester, who died in 2007, taught writing at the University of Maine. He was also the editor of the Backwoods Broadsides Poetry series—publishing 100 issues over 12 years.

In his writing he said that he was influenced by the nature poetry of Japanese and Chinese writers. “The way that they could do so much with so few words fascinated me….and I suppose one consistent effort in my writing has been to try to learn to approach their clarity of image, but in ordinary local situations and language. “Poem for St. Francis, for example, is my attempt to record, and may be to understand better, something I saw happen at the birdfeeder behind my house.”