Kevin Boyle is the author of two books of poems: A Home for Wayward Girls (New Issues Poetry Prize) and Astir (Jacar Press).

His poems have appeared in journals, including Hollins Critic, North American Review, Pleiades, Prairie Schooner and Virginia Quarterly Review.

He grew up in Philadelphia and now lives in Burlington, North Carolina in the US.

Beauty

Dogs don’t seem to care about the sunset
The way birds do with their stopwatch:
At 6:07 the sun goes down behind the duplex
And then the slow arrival of absolute silence
At 6:21. I have to use an app to have
Certainty: that’s the creek-like song of the robin
That trails off almost last. And the last
Is who knows who. Is this the most beautiful thing?
A bottle of wine, a slice of bread and cheese,
Outside by the rhododendrons about to open,
The green daffodils about to become mixed
With yellow, the frail dog in my lap turning
Fourteen in March, the weather so kind
Before the rains, my wife about to come home
In the dark. The limbs above my head stay on
The bending river birch, a brook two blocks away
Makes its royal progress. A friend said, These irises can be deadly
For a dog. The rhododendron, too. And the crocus by her stake.
The daffodils by the rosemary. Beauty, I guess,
Can be poisonous, he said. The dog barks at eight,
Her eyesight weak, because my wife is home,
Weighted down by work but carrying the missing piece.