The Innisfree Poetry Journal www.innisfreepoetry.org by Michael Lauchlan
A reader highlighted two lines but left me most of the poems untouched as morning snow
for a Sunday, late in a year at the end of an empire—my kids still dreaming their way down
twisted streets. So I read, and write to you, who will sit in judgment of us, I hope,
above high tide. I wish you the best in food, drink, sleep, and long love. I’ll let you
weigh what we wrought and why. Though I can’t defend my bit part, I gleaned a few songs,
some poems whose lines work back through our skin like splinters. You read this
(as I’ve dreamt you) in a time beyond my span, and perhaps you read from an old book
with marginalia to divert you. A morning has now grayed itself into cold existence.
Somewhere students roll over or rise to their studies. The work of our time waits in each day,
as useless and worthy as ever. We go to it in shame and hope as you go to yours. Forgive us.
Next Door
In the back of his garage (Christ, how did he ever get past rakes,
shovels, a rusted former lawnmower, five—count em—weedwhips in various states of undress, an axe
a maul?) he kept a bench built from scrap lumber in a fit of optimism when they'd first
moved in. Gloria’d wanted him to fix the screen door, so he made room for a mitre box and hung a vise
on one end. Under a window he kept assorted screws and nails in jars. She split when he died
and left it to a niece and her guy, but she asked me to help them save whatever still had value.
We stand in the doorway a while, as if letting our eyes adjust.
To them it’s just stuff they have to move or toss. The roof had always leaked a bit. I feel
them recoiling from layers of grime on turps, oil cans, gas cans, paints, and varnishes and edge
my way in, trying to show them that it’s OK. They’d need tools, at least some of them, not that
these two would ever know how to use any of this. I drag them in far enough to see drills
and hammers, screwdrivers and saws, but I can’t say much. Here, I want to say, he used these
wrenches when my pipes froze. It might freeze hard again this year. Under the bench, a bright
coil left from one last roof repair. He’d only let me steady the ladder for him. Here
are cut-offs from a swing he made when my kids were small. Cedar lasts forever, damn near.
Burning Up
They burn up crossing the sky, these comet shards. We watch, lying flat in a dark field catching their traces to ooh as each one passes. It’s a slow night, I guess. No raucous music or wild dancing, only rocks blazing overhead at fifty thousand miles-per-hour. The chill between Altair and Deneb swallows this hot effort like a word spoken into bitter silence.
The particles reach three thousand degrees, which seems a bit excessive just to thrill a few campers, a curious child, a couple lying in a soccer field. Soon, kids will roam this park learning to trap, dribble, pass, and shoot, tramping through mud enduring wind, learning to work magic with feet. Magic, as well, rules the night. Bats devour mosquitoes by the gross, navigating blackness by squeak and beep. Weightless fireflies mimic galaxies in our yards.
My wife sits up and takes my hand. For years, our kiss has hung, night by night, waiting for us. Such a vast neural catalog of sensation. What but excess animates our world? All who work know how bodies melt into sweat, how joints rebel. We’re apt to demand our due or harbor an ancient grudge. But only the mad, amid cosmic extravagance, refuse a child or withhold a word that may, released, ignite.
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