Hallway to Nowhere

Category: poetry

  • Soldier Boys (Poem)

    a sighting of a mountain cicada, green-shrouded

    silent, perhaps dying or dead

    a gentle thing out of place on the hot tarmac of the road

    far different from the first brood that appeared one year on the Gulf

    huge monstrous beings with bright red eyes

    wings so sharp that they would draw blood

    if their pointed neon-hued legs did not do that first

    (I bled a lot that year, being insatiably curious)

    soon they were EVERYWHERE

    covering not just trees but everything outdoors

    coating the banks of bayous and the surface of the pool

    they changed the rhythms of life by making us adjust

    then vanished, a short season of dark magic

    we called them soldier boys

    I never knew why

  • I Would Have Preferred A Wake Of Vultures (Poem)

    she is gone. that is all.

    the how, the why, the when are nothing.

    they cannot change these things:

    the bed no longer warmed by her long limbs.

    the blanket dampened by my tears.

    the pillow lonely without her head.

    that she walked into death with willing hands,

    the river her only road of escape,

    this does not matter.

    her absence is the bedrock of grief,

    the hard ground where I have lain,

    and from here I have to stand.

  • Your Name, Forgotten (Poem)

    the wind knew what I would not

    whispered it through the trees

    and they remembered it also

    made it shine like gold on every leaf

    weighing so heavy with unspoken love

    felling each one by one

    a foliaged pool spilled across the coal dust

    the dry rustle as I walked

    the brilliant glint that caught the sun

    these poured recall to my cracked broken heart

    I knelt in the trail and cried

  • The Wild Cherry (Poem)

    the wild cherry lies half hidden beneath a scaled root

    an ancient finger reaching in gnarled arboreal hunger

    it fell ripened red with a side of yellow but would sour the tongue

    though the oak might seek that tang as a bracing relief

    from the sweetness of rotting things

    the land beyond the fence belongs to untamed plants and feral creatures

    and all that reach whatever end moulder there

    leaves joining fur and bones in the fecund of decay

  • The Return (Poem)

    so many times she said I died,

    then I’d take a breath and live.

    again. until the next time.

    years later I saw her.

    for me it was as if for the first time,

    yet she gazed at me and smiled,

    “I would know you anywhere.”

    when I left, she held my face in her hands,

    her touch a gentle fierce love.

    then I remembered.

    and I know why I returned.

  • The Scent Of A Freshly Picked Tomato (Poem)

    rich with earth and sun and rain

    life itself as it ran through seed and vine

    heady enough to make one dream

    not just of meals laden with bounty

    but even of future ambition

    other crops sown in dirt raised to harvest

    generations that farm and forage

    wisdom once lost regained and put to use

    in last delicate balance with new

    and in our waning perhaps we say

    at the end finally we understand how to live

  • The Front Door Too Is Crumbling (Poem)

    though I would keep forgetting, everything-everything!-is friable

    a tea cup shatters but also bones

    I fractured a rib in a paroxysmal coughing fit

    the bedroom wall now shows a ceiling to floor crack

    also my immune system despite good care

    I enter into a crowded space, I leave with a chance of sickness

    my recoveries slower, more incomplete

    the walking stick’s bark is beginning to flake off

    but it holds me upright in the steep yard

    we’re both still serviceable but showing our age

    one day it will break

    one day I will die

    perhaps we’ll do so together, companions in the bardo

  • The Moment Before Tea (Poem)

    some afternoons hover on the edge

    a rough pottery cup falls from my hand

    spilling dreams across the kitchen table

    their brilliance saturates the wooden surface

    as it turns live with colors previously unknown

    rain drops transform into birds with glassine feathers

    that fly through the smazy windows

    in a dazzling glitter of reflected phantasmical hue

    all vanishes as I retrieve the cup

    tea is ready

  • Was It Rain Or Tears? (Poem)

    after weeks of punishing heat

    we walk out in early hours to sky misted with clouds

    and raise our faces wet with what could be tears

    but is rain so tentative we almost fear to breathe

    we stand in mute petition to beg the sun to hide

    please give this day over to other weather

    let us hope that what comes is kind

  • Sound of A Scorched Month (Poem)

    in this here at this now so much noise

    air itself vibrates and hums

    counterpoint to the rising drone of heat

    the occasional wind a parched threnody

    in chorus with barren hillsides

    trail once buttressed with foliaged arches

    no longer a quiet refuge

    brittle leaves in the coal dust underfoot

    each step rustles these premature bones

    a creek a well a desperate hope for rain

    the distant memory of silence