what she means calling
goose in flight over the bay
I cannot begin
to say but still I listen
moved as though on her broad wings
In his poems, whether tanka or free verse, Dean Schabner engages with the natural world not as symbol or metaphor, but as it is, finding there in fleeting instants and in stillness, depths of beauty born of love.
He seeks a purity of thought and language, conjuring a more essential state, in dialogue with the unconscious, yet full of intimacy -- with nature, with the beloved -- and the journey towards their convergence.