The title of this poem is “Lost”
and I think, of course it is.
You’re 17.
You’ve probably only been searching
for a year or two.
And most likely in the wrong places.
You’re not even getting warmer,
the child in me wants to say.
A half century ago all my poems
were titled “Lost.”
And I can tell you this,
Although you won’t believe me,
Finding yourself
Is not the endgame for a poet;
It’s not even the starting gate.
At my age,
You’ll still be mixing metaphors.
Summer that year smelled
like
mayonnaise
down at the end of the holler where
the waters ran over
coal-flecked rocks. I was almost
ten; the world now
a stranger—my body’s blood,
tang of a screen door after
rain.
To finish anything, I have to work backwards. Asked what peace means to me, I consider folding laundry. To do the next mindful thing takes a breach of will, for me. I am set on deep relaxation, cure for years of mild anxiety. I know that I will die. I think my body will remain, a source for something else to happen. Those I love will remember me, if I have touched their lives. I hope that I’ll be able, somehow, to remember them. Peace is a kind of mindlessness, allowing us to do the next easy thing. This basket of wash snatched from the line before rain has sat on my desk long enough to catch important papers, a week’s mail. Vaguely, I recall my dream: I am helping my mom, hanging damp clothes on the line out back. I keep dropping socks and washcloths into the dirt, but it is clean enough to shake off when they’re dry. I hear a baby crying. I wonder why the other folks don’t get him, then I know that he is mine. I wake up shouting for their help—aren’t I doing what needs doing? My dogs are howling in their crate. Barefoot, I walk over the clothes by my bed. Why do I leave so much to do? I know I used to pitch myself into the next chore that appeared, and somehow it all got done, or near enough to accept delightful rest. I could feel the work pound happily in my chest. I think that death brings mindlessness, without guilt. There is delight in stepping into the next challenge, something new appearing like the rocky step ahead. When I climb a hill—can I still climb a hill? I see the crumbled rock with plants attaching to the next available earth, the erosion from the rain. I take that reach and lift and rise higher up the mountain. The air is new, the sky different. I smile, panting.
Counted the space between your longest breaths
the flame would eventually consume.
Played the role of spectator to death
sitting in its transient room.
Fell powerless with the torch re-lit,
the weight of it, a fiery hurt
but waited for inevitable ash to sit
then approached with a heart full of dirt.
A lesson laid out in division physics
pure revelation pounded into earth;
the best way to stop a phoenix,
bury it before its birth.
Cultivated for over 2000 years
Named after a Greek god of healing
Peonies only flower for 7-10 days.
The god Paean knew the remedies for all things.
His medicine brought instant relief to the god of war
As well as to the wounded god of the underworld.
Sun Tung Po viewed peonies at the Temple of
Good Fortune on a cloudy afternoon.
Keats glutted sorrow on the wealth of globèd peonies.
Amy Lowell compared buds of peonies to a woman’s nipples.
Billy Collins’s perfect garden burst with peonies.
Their pools of lace broke Mary Oliver’s heart.
I move them around the house with me
To save them from the cats.
I.
Pat
Just the two of us
High on that mountain.
Mostly the same age
His in dog, me in kid.
He didn’t seem to know
He wasn’t like me, while l envied
His soft fur and rough tongue.
My first friend, always there.
He taught me to swim,
To drink the clear water
Only above the cow path,
And run home when Ma called.
Daddy named him Pat
After a man who fought Germans.
I worried if Germans marched
Here, would Pat chase them off.
Would I chase after him,
Would we find our way back,
Did they eat little kids,
Would they capture Pat?
Was it a dream that scared him,
Did the scabs take in the night
Did he not hear me call
And call and cry?
No Pat, only an echo answered
Me on this empty mountain.
Two is good even if his barks
Is all the words he talked to me.
K. Bruce Florence
June 1, 2017
birthright
awakened startled
a cold sweat
something’s wrong
couldn’t put
my finger on it
night sky clear yet
in my mind
fog grew thicker
read my blood-sugar
meter said fifty-five
way too low
had to raise it
peanut butter with honey
coffee with cream
fog lifts
thinking clearly
a gift I inherited
from my father
and passed on
to my child
her husband keens,
threads the dead rows,
plots the land’s fevered sleep.
He wears a muddy buffalo cap,
listens for the stream,
becomes bodiless, wings
the color of night, quickens
to a crow. His tight caution
of low choked vowels
pecks her awake.
~ Found poem composed/modified from words in Claudia Emerson’s poem “Scarecrow at the Forks of Buffalo”
Skin pulls apart like sandwich bread.
Feet callous without spongy platforms wrapped with string.
Without plasticine armor, eyes attract sparks and shrapnel
like magnetic pin cushions.
Falling backwards, your neck could strike the corner of a coffee table,
crack through a single vertebra,
and unreversibly slice your power cord.
You are basically glass,
but have such nerve
to pretend you’re smelted from iron.
You aren’t afraid to crack, splinter, explode into shards.
You’re happy, skipping through puddles, because you know that
no matter how much it rains,
you’ll never rust.
