Peter Makuck

Peter Makuck, twice a winner of the annual Brockman-Campbell Award for the best book of poems by a North Carolinian, lives on the barrier island of Bogue Banks. In October 2016, BOA Editions published his sixth volume of poetry, Mandatory Evacuation. Peter also founded and edited Tar River Poetry from 1978 to 2006, the year he retired from East Carolina University as Distinguished Professor Emeritus.

Ritual

Coffee beans
just out of the grinder
flavor the air
like incense.

Winter light
almost above the treeline.

The old toaster
reddening its thin filaments
at the halves of a muffin.

By the window
washed yesterday
you watch chickadees
to and fro at the feeder.

No news.
The kitchen is calm,
the quiet rich
with presence.

Light seeps
through the black limbs
of live oaks
and beards of spanish moss.

There is no was
only now
a breeze stirring
those long strands of moss.