The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Gerald Jonas

Three Short Poems

The Book of When

The endtimes come and go. 

In empty silos

neighbors vie for leavings

and learn the patience

of raptor or prey. 

A new ardor

takes the name of need.

The hunted inherit

the blinds and multiply

to the slither of water

endlessly washing its hands.

Dread-tide, receding,

undrowns us one by one.

Palm Springs

Rooftops whitely resist the sun.

Silent as lizards golf carts scuttle

from green to green. Like dowsers

old men point their clubheads at the

desert’s heart: a sunken river real

as Coleridge’s. Behind their shades

plungers shuffle cards and bet

their pills against the odds.

A Dream of Salmon

We dreamed of a calm

at the riverhead where

birth and death meet

like spent arrows,

but never made that leap. 

Instead, where salt met sweet,

you saw in feathered lure

a pledge of flight and

quick as prayer ascended

to the dream of air.