J. R. Phillips
    J. R. Phillips is currently enrolled in the Masters Program at Antioch University. He has studied with Kenneth Rexroth and Ann Sanford.  James says he’s “way too busy to pursue non-paying magazine and journal publications.” He says he’s “content with eight full-volume book publications of poetry, fiction and plays.”  He has spent the past 30 years raising three sons and managing investment portfolios for retired and retiring individuals at a major Wall Street firm in Century City.  He is a first generation Welshman on his father’s side and he’s Irish on his mother’s side.


A Canticle to the Bells

In Florence the days are as one
And the mornings peel back the night
In a litany of church bells that clang
And clammer in the polyphonic sky.
Bells become words to waken an ancient world:
Et in Spi-ri-tum San-ctum, Domi-num,
Sanctus, Sanctus, San—ctus Do-minus
De-us Sa—ba—oth, Sa-ba-oth, Sa-ba-oth.
Let us live and love and care little
For the dullard debts and the stolid ties
That bind us to the wheel and grind us till forgotten.
For the bells breathe light on the Piazza San Marcos,
On the Piazza della Signoria, on the Uffizi
And the Academy (where looms David the goliath).
And the bells breathe light on the rust-colored roofs
Of the Cupola and the Campanile and the Duomo
And all the streets and rivers outlined by the path
And the shops and the houses and the statues.
The bells breathe light and break open the skies
And clang and clammer and clutter the air
To waken an ancient world, revive a weary traveler.




© 2012 J. R. Phillips
J.R. Phillips was a Featured Poet who read his poetry at the May 2012 Second Sunday Poetry Series