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This poem is taken from PN Review 70, Volume 16 Number 2, November - December 1989.

For Thom Gunn, Thinking of him in Vermont Timothy Steele

The woods enclose a pond where a low dock
Extends out with a buffer zone of tires;
The water's surface smokily suspires;
A woodpecker imparts a hollow knock
To the decayed and bleached spar of a tree.
If April mixes memories and desires,
Here it blends beauty and austerity.

Damp gusts can find no foliage to tremble.
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