Bill Spencer

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Before Carolyn

I didn't notice the songs of vireos
the undulation of flickers' flight
the whir and flap of heron wings

didn't divine the constellations—
Orion's belt, the Pleiades, Cassiopeia

didn't understand the way celestial bodies move—
the moon
the sun
the stars

or
Carolyn herself.

Bill Spencer, an advisory editor for Tar River Poetry, has published poems in Tapestry and The Best of Poetry Night and has published scholarship on Cormac McCarthy, with emphasis on the novel Suttree. He has an anecdote forthcoming in Reader's Digest and has written a screenplay, Angel Pays a Visit, based on the poetry books of his artist wife, Carolyn Elkins. For twenty years his writing life has centered around the Wildacres Writers Workshop. A retired English professor, he lives in a cabin in the mountains of western North Carolina.