Bellowing in the Common

Bellowing in the Common is Karl Petersen's first book. This collection "bellows" on behalf of the unheard things and people. Unheard and unseen, because they are too ordinary and common for human perception. His poetry shows how the mundane -- whether it be a boat rocking at the dock or a garden squash -- often rings with a voice louder and more startling than the extraordinary, if only we have ears to hear. Karl Petersen hears a bellowing in the common and, with a true poet's vocation, awakens us with new ears to the same old tunes.




​Publisher: Regent College Publishing (1999)

Order: Amazon

from the book...

Whaling

You play the waves
of archipelago pathways 
in arches black on white, Killer  
they call you, I call you Worship,

rising at first light to release
sighs of vaporous praise,
pent up ecstasy sprayed
sky-bound from the deep;

your pliant fin genuflects
a glint of reverence, and a wake
whispers through the dawn
guiding the dull and disquieted

to a far off Light; big Worship
plunging again for fresher treasure
and erupting nose first to the sun
in one great lunge of praise. 
                                 
​                            

---