Tom Montag

Tom Montag's books of poetry include: Making Hay & Other Poems; Middle Ground; The Big Book of Ben Zen; In This Place: Selected Poems 1982-2013; This Wrecked World; The Miles No One Wants; Imagination's Place; Love Poems; and Seventy at Seventy. His poem 'Lecturing My Daughter in Her First Fall Rain' has been permanently incorporated into the design of the Milwaukee Convention Center.

He blogs at The Middlewesterner. With David Graham he recently co-edited Local News: Poetry About Small Towns.

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► Tom's microchap is available below. Download the single-page PDF by clicking the title & saving to your pc. Set your printer for 'landscape' printing. Folding instructions are under the Who We Are menu tab.

Origami Microchap

Maybe Holy
Six Old Monk Poems

Click title to download PDF microchap

Tom Montag CVR Maybe Holy Six Old Monk Poems 2021

Cover art by Lauri Burke

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The mountain
doesn't provide

silence,
the old monk says.

You have to
bring that with you.

Where it is is
where it is,
the old monk says,

unless you ask
how fast it's going.

This is the
progression of things,

the old monk says.
First, it is.

Then it is
like something else.

Then it is
something else.

If you were
a poet, you would

know this.

Even when
the math is wrong,

the old monk says,
the stars can still

work out their part.

You could do more,
the old monk said,

if you also
did it sideways.

Ah, yes,
the desire to be

without desire
is the worst

one of all,
the old monk says.

It lets you
think you are,

maybe, holy.

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Poets