Cost
by Sean Sexton
I’ll call him Hector—
the black and white kitten
crushed in a Sunday street
I stopped and turned
around to lift & place
in the bower of a front yard
shrubbery as once,
guided by Hermes, Priam
sought out and
kissed in ransom,
the hands of a man
who’d slain his son,
that he might
collect and bear
the body home,
and lay him to peace.
Sean Sexton was born in Indian River County and grew up on his family's Treasure Hammock Ranch. He divides his time between managing a 700-acre cattle operation, painting, and writing. He is author of two chapbooks, and three full volumes of poetry: Blood Writing, Poems, Anhinga Press, 2009, and May Darkness Restore, Poems, Press 53, 2019, and Portals, Poems, Press 53, 2023. He performs regularly at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, NV, and is on the faculty of the 2024 Southeastern Writers Assn. Conference on St. Simon's Island, GA in June. He was nominated for a 2020 and 2021 Pushcart Prize and received a FL Individual Artist’s Fellowship in 2001. He's a board member of the Laura Riding Jackson Foundation and founding event chair of their Annual Poetry and Barbeque held each April, now in its fifteenth year. He also co-founded Poetry and Organ Advent and Lenten Concert Series at Community Church in Vero Beach, FL featuring nine concerts annually attracting poets from all over the US. He became inaugural Poet Laureate of Indian River County in 2016. Sean is also a visual artist who draws, paints, and has kept sketch and writing journals for more than fifty years. Recently he began to add photography to his ongoing discourse with the beloved landscape of his upbringing.