Posts for June 9, 2021 (page 10)

Spring on Big Mountain

Dusk arrives as I gaze through my dusty
back window to the crown of the greening

mountain. Yesterday I heard the first cry
of the whippoorwill. The warbling

caw vibrated up and down
my spine like a tiny lighting bolt. I have heard

dark stories about this mountain. Neighbors
say at the turn of the century

a moonshiner was shot dead by Cates
Creek. But there are little jolts

of light everywhere:  goldenrod,
wild petunias & pale minature

orchids, thousands
of white trillium jutting up.

Half a week

we raccoons

have

raided your:

cabinets and

refrigerator and

grandmothers refrigerator and

all the

little containers

you leave

lying

around and

your jewelry boxes.

We gather around

your sitting

room table

and

divide up

your valuables.

boxes open

our hands pass

broaches

and

necklaces.

with love

we stash them

away

and

adorn them.

We make our way

to you sitting

hand them to your

weathered hands.

you tell

stories

of their origin

and

pass them on

to our

nocturnal hands

Baby’s eating ink again –
a writer’s born every day –
Me? I’m nibbling paper,
with nothing much to say

She’s spitting words and polka dots,
dangling metaphors on air,
while all the while, I’m watching,
hoping, without a word to spare

She drifts asleep, as dreamers do,
to draft a skein of tale,
and all I do is wander her,
ponder poems inside this shell

These local strays have decided 
tonight’s the night to fuck or fight 
right below my bedroom window.
It’s vicious sounding, too.
They banged into the trailer
in a brutal wad of claws and fangs, 
hissing out unholy yowls 
that set the dogs to barking
all up and down the holler.
I’d about bet the fur was flying

and that there’s blood 
on the back porch by morning,
where the loser or the winner 
will retreat to lick their wounds.
I try to put a stop to it.
The fucking or fighting, either way.
There are only so many homes to find 
for feral, country-ass kittens
and cantankerous, one-eyed toms. 

I liked to see the Cape Cod fenced
in with white picket, and bushes

green which obscured the backyard,
clenched by thicket down.  

This is where I loved you nights,
as I might have stolen

a cigarette and a beer
by your side, never long enough

because children 
were a full time job.

This painting’s music is 1950 time
and the pain between my ears

is mood, because I’m nothing
special for us, or to you.

This is me,
knowing I can’t fix this.

Are you ready for it?
Neither can you.

I stand in the bedroom closet
looking at pale yellows and blues,

whites and green capsules,
hoping to hide—

odorless, concealable, anonymous,
better than whiskey.

Maybe this will save us
from our sins.

A tag team in and out the door.
A broken waltz hobbling across the floor.

           In America we make sports 
           cars by the thousands
           to light up the roadways
           with testicular screams.
           I know.  I live on a strip now.
           They howl passing cities
           until doctors pronouce 
           the cause of death.
           Do you hear them?  

Over coffee, I smile at a friend
glad for the lack of complication.

She can’t stop smiling,
it’s good to see you back.

This isn’t extraordinary,
but for what it lacks.

Let’s think of something else
to look at she said.

The desert-stage beyond our
Glass proscenium held magic
Today: Wand waved, mountains gone!
East shrouded, cityscape vanished.
Some told of fires west and south;
Smoke settling here obscuring all.
I settle for sleight-of hand.

They say you never forget your first love,
To this I can agree with,
You can block them,
Delete their photos,
Hide or trash their things,
Or even drop any mutual friends,
You may scrub you life of all traces of your first,
But you will never forget,
Some nights you’ll randomly remember their smile,
Their laugh,
Or some way they made you feel,
You may wonder what they are up to,
How their life has progressed since you split,
Thoughts may wonder the infamous what if,
In the end though those thoughts quickly fade,
And your first love goes back into hiding,
Deep within your heart,
Where they cannot be forgotten

she calls herself
sylph in a black t-shirt,
singing that it’s okay, then saying
“You can’t wait until
life isn’t hard anymore
before you decide to be happy.”
And she’s right, that two percent
                   isn’t zero
as I sob around my pasta. Every season,
it’s something. Someone.
After a yearfull
of so much sadness
I really need this one to stick.