A Few of My Poems...

Tracks

…but I’ve made homes in the screams

of fast passing trains…

i. The Summer, 1982

A wonder, really, how the Maggodee

Creek held the weight of that train

on her slim back bank, how the rumble

of them both never broke the thin-paned

windows of the parsonage, how they swallowed

the cries that, in spite of the narrow space

beneath the twin bed, I failed to hide.

A wonder, too, how that old willow

still weeps, its yellow-green leaves a tithe,

an August offering, my deliverance

from distrust and the trickery

of fingers I once thought holy.

ii. Early Spring, 1995

Wise Avenue, one block up

from the projects, a house so settled

the floors slanted and the tops

of doors were shaven near the hinges

just so they could close, it was his joy

that he could beat me dreamless,

and after, I’d lie in wait for the roar

of a late-night train. Land’s flat

in Southeast, and that means speed.

Whistle’s pierce, the bold echo of steel

against steel, lifted me, carried me away.

iii. The Fall of 2002

I look toward Tinker Mountain,

more than a mound of rock and damp

earth that beacons light (from my left)

and sound waves, invisible to my opened eyes.

I amble through gray swirls of night’s

last cigarette and wonder if my boys are staying

warm, if they hear the chapel bells chime two

like I do. They are safe from any real crossing.

I have been drawn to the other side.

And I know they don’t welcome this rush,

train’s blunt force, the simple transport

sought in a low, bone-rattling hum.

**************************

Not Happiness, But the Pursuit Thereof

I’m taking a right, switch-

back onto the horseshoe bend

like I was flying, non-stop, to the top

of Buffalo Mountain. And I rise

by way of going on the down-low,

where let down does not mean defeated,

no traction, no grip of thick rubber and spinning

aluminum to bone-dry asphalt.

Nothing’s holding.

I feel faults, fractures pushing hard

against the inside of my summer

skin. I pull out the splinters like boiled

bird bones, sew them to the outside—

exposed. And when there is no more road,

I take off through the woods;

red stems of bittersweet

taunt the soles of my feet, and with this speed,

dogbane paints the forest floor

periwinkle blue. This is a land of

cattle farms and communes, a one-stoplight-

life with faint pulse. Breathless, I pause,

let hearts of honeysuckle beat on my tongue.

**********************************

Mid-Winter

and unclothed, splayed open,

exposed, Virginia is odd and cold.

Low clouds, barometric rise

and fall. All movement is measured,

radical but in hundredths of inches.

Little is relative here, save for slow-

passing bruises. Somewhere,

a woman drowns in blue, thick

contusion, night’s ink—see

how it bleeds between sallow flesh

and the atmosphere of deep sleep,

the truths refused, in waking, to be seen.

Mid-January

and even the birds have broken down.

Eyes open—every streak of her

iris is an open fault line or infinite

ravine, mark of the lost, or stripped

limbs, black as blame.

This is a poem for the spirit-

dead, a frameless grave to hold

the bones of the lonely, the nameless.

This is a eulogy for the loss of perspective.