Welcome to Gnat Smoke Press
Gnat Smoke Press is a publication company dedicated to bringing you the finest quality poetry and fiction from John Ryland. As a southern small press, we revel in southern hospitality and great southern writing. We are unique, perhaps a little quirky, but we always aim to please. Stay a while, have a look around, just be careful which curtain you pull back. Some of them are hiding ghosts.
The Favor of Giants
When the voice of giants rumble
across the land and the sea,
shaking the timbers of trestles
rattling leaves from the trees,
men will quit their labors and listen
to foolish folly and fables.
Yet when the small voice of truth
is but a crumb fallen from their table.
Truth gently comes to their ears,
like a mosquito to be swatted away,
but the giant’s voice is loudly
present in their mind every day.
So they go about their life
happy in their daily labor
ever searching to find only
themselves in the giant’s favor.
The folly of man is long
passed to their sons in succession,
while the sit and quietly complain
of their eternal oppression.