POETRY BY RICHARD FOERSTER
WHAT WAS GIVEN
What was given came without
the usual reasons—the earth
that day having completed
no meaningful circuit of the sun.
The giving should have
been cause enough
for surprise, or that hidden beneath
patterned folds of wrap,
within
a box large as any man's bewilderment,
waited some unknown thing,
purchased
after long labor. How undeserved,
that unreciprocated moment,
when all the twisted paths
they'd walked together
and alone,
seemed to brighten at the first tug
on the bow, the paper hinging
out
like doors, the lid ready to come undone
as one stood there, still
too frightened to peer inside.
Richard Foerster was born
in the Bronx, New York, and attended Fordham University and the University
of Virginia. He is the author of four collections, Sudden Harbor
and Patterns of Descent (both published by Orchises
Press); Trillium (BOA Editions, 1998), which received
Honorable Mention for the 2000 Poets' Prize; and Double Going,
which BOA will bring out in January 2002. Other honors include the
"Discovery"/The Nation Award, Poetry
magazine's Bess Hokin Prize, fellowships from the National Endowment
for the Arts and the Maine Arts Commission, and the 2000/2001 Amy
Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship. He has worked as a lexicographer,
educational writer, typesetter, and as the editor of the literary
magazine Chelsea. He currently lives in York Beach, Maine.
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