Least of These

Todd Davis, winner of the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize, teaches at Penn State University’s Altoona College. His poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His poems have been featured in numerous journals, and on the radio by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac. Davis is also the author or editor of six scholarly books.

• Contents Last of December I. And the Dead Shall Be Raised Incorruptible A Memory of Heaven None of This Could Be Metaphor Th e Face of Jesus Stem Cell Confession Tequila Aubade Craving Doctrine Letter to Galway Kinnell at the End of September Half in the Sun Weather Report My Family Sees My Empty Hands Forgive Me The Secrets of Baking Soda What if in the beginning Invasive A Psalm for My Children Our Forgetting On the eve of the Iraqi Invasion, my wife says Jonah Begins to Think like a Prophet The Fish in the Cage An Island Mother Speaks Black Water Obituary Veil Again, at Daybreak Praying II. Happiness Like a Thief Democracy The Blessing of the Body, Which Isthe House of Prayer Aesthetics The Rhododendron Questions for the Artist The River The Sunflower Dryad Gastronomy Christmas Eve Winter Morning Responsibility Farm Wives Note to Walt Whitman Shibboleth After It Rained All Night, She Said He Woke Up Dead Entering the Meadow above Three Springs Run Some Say the Soul Makes the Living Weep Neither Here Nor There Why We Don’t Die The Kingdom of God Is like This The Saints of April Migration Accident The Least of These Happy for This Omen Nicodemus’s Complaint Last Supper For My Father’s Death, Before It Happens III. April Poem Turkey Hunting My Son, in Love for the First Time Vernal Theodicy The World Can Be a Gentle Place The Night aft er the Day the Clover Blooms July Finds the Soul like a Ripe Berry Puberty Keeping Secrets Persephone Dreams of Thomas Hart Benton Upon Finding Something Worthy of Praise Field Mouse A German Farmer Thinks of Spring Necessity Far Afield Consider Note to My Wife, with Hopes She Won’t Need to Read It for Some Time Now When We Kiss Barn Swallows Omnivore Spared Cows Running The Sleep of Pears Salvage Matins Indian Summer Yellow Light What I Wanted to Tell the Nurse When She Pricked MyTh umb Solvitur Ambulando Ananias Lays Hands on Saul Apology to Crows Bacchanalian Interlude House of the World Golden Tree of Heaven Ascension Acknowledgments About the Author

"Many poets feel that they know the natural world, but Todd Davis has absorbed this world fully into his heart and mind. He is a fine, rare poet. - Jim Harrison, author of Dalva"