Pelicans

Musings for February 12, 2009

Pelicans

For the next several weeks, “Musings” will be dedicated to publishing poetry and artwork from the Aroma of Art fundraiser auction going on throughout February at Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse in downtown Hickory.
Aroma of Art is a month long silent auction whose proceeds benefit three nonprofits, ALFA (AIDS Leadership Foothills-area Association), Humane Society of Catawba County, and Women's Resource Center. Local artists have donated works which are on display in Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse and can be bid on there. Final bid winners will be announced at Aroma of Art’s Grand Finale, slated for February 28.
In conjunction with Aroma of Art, Poetry Hickory is sponsoring an Ekphrastic Poetry Event. Area writers can produce a poem based on one of the works in the Aroma of Art display and submit it for inclusion in the exhibit. Selected poems will be framed, displayed next to the subject work of art and presented to the winning bidder at the Grand Finale. Poets whose works are selected will also be invited to read their poems at the Aroma of Art Ekphrastic Poetry Event at Taste Full Beans on February 26. Poems should include the author’s name and contact information as well as the title of the AOA piece it is based on and submitted by February 17 to Taste Full Beans or by email to asowens1@yahoo.com.
The poem below was inspired by Joe Young’s photograph, Brown Pelican. Young is the Photographic Technology Program Director at Catawba Valley Community College. He is a photography graduate of Appalachian State University and currently a graduate student at Savannah College of Art and Design. His photography has been published around the world, and he has won numerous awards in photojournalism and fine art photography. Young currently has an exhibit at Davidson County Community College in Lexington, NC. Young resides in Hickory with his wife and daughter.
For more information on Aroma of Art, visit the website at http://aromaofart.blogspot.com/ or call Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse at 828-325-0108. For information on the Ekphrastic Poetry Event or Poetry Hickory, contact Scott Owens at asowens1@yahoo.com or 828-234-4266.

Pelicans

They were military before it was cool,
skimming sound and surf beneath the radar
in attack or surveillance formation, fanned-out
V’s leaving little below concealed,
non-coms mostly, grunts of the animal
world, gangly and ungraceful,
profiles like pterodactyl forebears,
anatomy prehistoric, obsolete,
having skipped the last evolutionary
paradigm shift, yet somehow still surviving,
not the fittest by far, nothing like tern,
gull, osprey. Who would think
something this big could dive
beneath the waves and still come out whole.