A great friend of In Posse Review, a wonderful heart and soul, poet, teacher and Shakespeare scholar Rex McGuinn died suddenly on Saturday, September 28th, while jogging, getting ready to run a marathon. He was 51.

The Astronomer Beside His Telescope
     Looks with His Eyes Out His Window
I think of myself as moving.
On the surface of a planet
I know in my mind I
Move breathtakingly—that
I rise and fall and rush
Across a universe with a star
Around which I move,
Thought only in my mind.
For to my eyes it moves across
My window and I am still.
But I feel myself moving,
Looking out on rain-soaked
Shale of a classroom hall.
I move inside with emotion
Thinking this is how I feel,
Feeling in spite of thought
The orbit of my blood.
I see in things how my soul is,
I feel the beauty of things,
Red leaves on the oaken chest:
I move with visions—
A friend in a flannel shirt,
A woman in a cotton dress,
And all those who move around me,
Around whom I move,
With whom I rise or fall or rush
Through an emptiness I love
And fear and cannot comprehend.

This poem was first published in In Posse Review, Issue 5. For many years Rex McGuinn taught English Literature and poetry at Phillips Exeter Academy at Exeter, New Hampshire. His work has appeared in numerous publications including Kansas Quarterly, The Hiram Review, Commonweal, and Prairie Schooner among many others. His most recent book length collection of poems "Landing In Minneapolis" was published by St. Andrews Press. In Posse Review will remember Rex with love and gratitude.
 
 
 
 

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