The Earliest Witnesses by G.C. Waldrep John Birtwhistle – Dave Coates

– Dave Coates

Though they went extinct 65 million years ago

delight and inspiration for all

monsters and manta rays

Matthew Dickman

The Earliest Witnesses by G.C. Waldrep John Birtwhistle – Dave CoatesWaldrep's seventh collection begins where his prior collection, feast gently, left off: "This is how the witness ends: touch, withdraw; touch again," according to the opening poem in The Earliest Witnesses. If these are poems of witness, then they are also testators to the craft of seeing: eye proofs of an epiphenomenal world. "Can you see this," the ophthalmologist in "A Mystic's Guide to Arches" asks over and over again. Sight becomes both the