Posts for 2020 (page 19)

Standing in a boat, a feeling floated 

On Lake Cumberland,
escaping Corvid-19,
I cast live bait
toward the rock bank.

Old Seventy Creek
in its flow
falls in mist
against my face.

I stand in the
wooden boat
my father and I
built in a shed

off the milk parlor.
I cast live bait
into the foam topped
roll churning.

In morning light,
laps of water
against the wooden hull,
captures a rhythm that

pushes the boat back.
Words escape my mind.
I want to write poetry for you,
fishing is no longer a priority.

The sun rises, a feeling floated up
to the surface, reminding me
of how lonely I am
without you in our dry bed.

Sitting on top your mantel,
chiming every hour
on the hour. But now
it’s more of a scratch
than a chime. It’s
crying an S.O.S and
my ears were the only set
to pop up
for the fifty year old
piece of our family’s white flag.
Only I heard the siren
it sang so softly.
It’s been my music
for life and now
that you’re both gone,
it has run out of juice, no
sheets left to play. After
aging alongside you with
every tick, the clock
is being forced to let go—
so am I.

Like a two star general
When I open the writing desk of the secretary
I discover an invading army of ants, numberless but as one

My neglect of mopping up
The scattered crumbs from the battlefield
Of last night’s prolonged scrimmage against decent poetry

Is Painfully obvious.
Through my magnifying lens I’m awed
At the ants’ singular purpose, soldering their bounty

In a straight line down the desk leg
Across the floor and out the sliding glass door
To a hill camouflaged in your copious garden of delights.  I march

To the kitchen for supplies
But my return finds you standing 
By the secretary rooting about in a pile of composting

Books.  I can only look sheepish
The way you pivot your eyes for my attention
and say, hey, do you want to hear the two big things

I’m always asking myself?
How can we help the soil improve its figure
How can we make sure there’s room for us in the world

The fire
may burn
tall,
but my
ashes
will float 
higher.

the angel is cold and gray
she waits with patience
all will join her here someday

My phone babbles.  Informs me I live in Bondville—
a ghost town— adds it to my favorites.  At light of day,
it inquires “How is the Dollar General?”
where I’ve never gone.  It declares
“Traffic is moderate” on my dead end road.   
My phone is an alarmist, haunted with Amber Alerts
from half the state away. It dings and bleeps
to warn of tornado, flood, the UV Index. 
My phone wants to make me safe again,
a well-warned, nervous wreck.   It suggests
I’ll be smarter, more connected, it has me in training,
earning some kind of rewards.  It can tell me
anything in any language.  It translates,
it defines, it predicates and predicts. 
It anticipates, based on some universal  
logarithm.  But, as particular, peculiar,  
and irregular as I am,  I find myself,
when I resist this phoney or when it fails me,
left in complete isolation, utter
ignorance and unaccountable freedom. 

Stephen Chobosky wrote the words “We accept the love we think we deserve” in The Perks of Being a Wallflower and those words hit me like one of your slaps across my face
Like an unexpecting gut punch after suffering through your harsh words

We accept the love we think we deserve because we’ve never seen it any other way. We don’t know what healthy love looks like when we’ve only seen love in the bright light of gaslights.

We accept that love because we were raised in the back of cars shuffled between parents who didn’t understand us. How could they understand us when we were begging for love they didn’t know how to give?

We accept that love because we think we deserve the backhanded remarks and teeth marks of lovers. How can you love someone without abuse? Is it really love if it doesn’t feel like an anxiety attack?

We accept that love until it kills us or we learn to grow into new kinds of love. Love that accepts us back. Until we learn that we don’t derserve pain, we deserve all the things that rom coms promised us and more. We deserve safety, security, and partnership.

I reject that love I used to think I derserved.

a crystal fog descends
on a stale, stagnant soul.
the cavalry is coming.
fury-filled.
fear-fueled.
a group of lone wolves
gathering bones.
the sun goes down-
the peaks turn red.
slaughter erupts like a virus.

One  

I took the dog for a walk before bed, the day’s heat having kept us in. This happens as we both grow old. About half-way through, the wind shifted and lifted, clouds began to hide the full moon and ocean of stars, all this joined by a quick drop in the temperature. Later, snug under a blanket, I woke to listen to rain on the roof, thunder through the walls, like I did so long ago as a child. In the morning, the ground was still dry and cracked. Now I wonder if storms, in dying, leave behind spirits to revisit us.    

Two  

I woke to some sound an hour or so before the first, false dawn, some mix of tears falling and lips parting in a smile. There was a woman — you — sitting faintly on the side of the bed I always leave empty. Frozen in time, the contours of your face blended with the darkness of the room and the bleakness of my missing you. The sounds came not from you, but from my dreams. In the morning, any evidence of this outside my heart was gone like last week’s spectral storm.    

Three  

Working in the woods, clearing deadfall to dry and burn come late Autumn, trying to clear the past from my head with no success, I find myself talking with you, asking how things are on the other side, beckoning answers for the sound of your voice, the breath of your whisper in my ear. The closest reply is a ghostly smell of cigarette smoke among the trees, perhaps carried on the wind, perhaps remembered, maybe a sign that you’ve been listening.