John Philip Drury - Poems based on Dowland and Turner

Drury LE P&W January 2026

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Live Encounters Poetry & Writing January 2026.

Poems based on Dowland and Turner by John Philip Drury.

To the Tune of “Fine Knacks for Ladies”

after John Dowland

Roses, carnations, baby’s breath, and mums
belong in funeral parlors, not in homes.
That’s what my wife will tell her valentine.
Blushing, abashed, I blunder every time.
The flowers that she’ll praise
stay in the yard,
making it hard
to give bouquets.

Weeding the garden, pulling vines and twigs
and stuffing them in big, brown, paper bags,
I fail to recognize the leaves-of-three
until the poison ivy’s poisoned me.
Urushiol oil’s the splash
causing the itch,
making me scratch
that burning rash.

Out at the nursery, strolling down an aisle,
we pick two pots of purple asters I’ll
plant in a spot where shady sunlight falls.
We always cultivate perennials.
They’ll stay for years right there,
blossoming when
spring comes again
like love we share.

NOTE: My pronunciation of “urushiol” is “yuh-ROOSH-ul,” eliding the last two syllables. Here’s a link to the the Consort of Musicke’s recording of this lute song by John Dowland (1563-1626):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6RMjaF-JNI&list=RDa6RMjaF-JNI&start_radio=1.

Snowstorm: Steamboat off a Harbour’s Mouth

after J.M.W. Turner

Lashed to the mast, he witnessed how the sea

and snowstorm whirled around the steamer’s funnels

while signal rockets flared. From memory

he painted waves that swamped the listing gunwales,

mixed with the blizzard in a spiraling flame—

“soapsuds and whitewash,” his detractors said.

Riding the weather out, Turner became

the vessel’s animated figurehead,

bound to report on his experience:

a painful beauty, like the sirens’ keening.

Whether a storm or chorus makes you wince

with pleasure, you pursue it for the joining

of rapture and restraint—the rapture of

restraint, the pent-up ecstasy of love.

J.M.W. Turner, “Snowstorm: Steamboat off a Harbour’s Mouth” (1842)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Storm:_Steam-Boat_off_a_Harbour%27s_Mouth#

John Philip Drury is the author of six poetry collections: The Stray Ghost (a chapbook-length sequence), The Disappearing Town, Burning the Aspern Papers, The Refugee Camp, Sea Level Rising, and most recently The Teller’s Cage (Able Muse Press, 2024). His first book of narrative nonfiction, Bobby and Carolyn: A Memoir of My Two Mothers, was published by Finishing Line Press in August 2024. After teaching at the University of Cincinnati for 37 years, he is now an emeritus professor and lives with his wife, fellow poet LaWanda Walters, in a hundred-year-old house on the edge of a wooded ravine.

John Philip Drury – Poems based on Dowland and Turner

To the Tune of “Fine Knacks for Ladies”

Snowstorm: Steamboat off a Harbour’s Mouth

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