GARY YOUNG

SPRING/SUMMER 2021 ISSUE #02 FEATURED POET

Gary Young’s most recent books are That’s What I Thought, winner of the Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award from Persea Books, and Precious Mirror, translations from the Japanese. His books include Even So: New and Selected Poems; Pleasure; No Other Life, winner of the William Carlos Williams Award; Braver Deeds, winner of the Peregrine Smith Poetry Prize; The Dream of a Moral Life which won the James D. Phelan Award; and Hands. Young has received grants from the NEH, NEA, the California Arts Council, and the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, among others. He teaches creative writing and directs the Cowell Press at UC Santa Cruz.

AS THE WEATHER WARMS

As the weather warms year after year, aspens move higher up the draws. The mesas are green into September. Eagles hunt over Red Canyon, hawks keep watch in the pines, and ospreys dip into the streams. It is late in the season when the waxwings gorge themselves on chokecherries, lift as one, spin above the hay fields, and head for the prairie.