The Innisfree Poetry Journal www.innisfreepoetry.org by Brent Pallas THE SECRET LIFE Listen as it whispers its intentions in parking lots off the interstate while everything else willow limbs and door knobs pens amongst their papers creak with ordinary stillness it rattles with abandonment like a peanut up a vacuum's hose. Its needs are met by mail and it always wears a hat. Rising out of dull meetings with the glint of a kiss. Its window overlooks. Its doorway beckons. Its violin calls a lost child reaching for some crumb of sweetness. And no matter what scented glove of despair or flower of longing is pressed between its pages it glistens like a ring left behind on a business trip. FOR A CANE LEFT IN A GARBAGE CAN It's yesterday's news now, a leafless stem sprouting from the lip of a garbage can. A remedy that did its business and moved on. No longer is the patient grimacing through the final page of a bum knee or some bathtub's dizzying curb after grabbing a handful of air for a handrail. Even my own graceless limp of a gouty toe and each unforgiving day of it I remember hobbling about like my great-uncle did down to his bench in the backyard. I can't even recall now what it was he didn't steer clear of years back or which leg didn't bend as he sat watching another afternoon slip into evening. REPLACEMENT PARTS Now and then they're needed to replace what grows dim, bespectacled, a syllable of itself. A garage door creaking upward where it once purred, an eardrum faint as prayer. Every part ground to whispers, a piston's fiery soul a flicker, a knee joint recoiling like a worm. And a look beneath the hood reveals what's no longer a curve, every washer thin, worn to barely there knowing it's time for what rolled left to roll right again. THE MINIATURISTS You have to admire them, these artists of the microscopic, gleaners of great patience delivering portraits the size of nickels. Knowing any brush wider than an eyelash wouldn't do. They left no doubt about the irresistibility of a certain lady's dimples or her whaling captain husband's insufficient chin. Others will write your kid's name (they say it's lucky) for a buck on a grain of rice, or sigh, when the schooner fits in the glistening harbor of a jar. Distilling their passion down enough to fill a thimble. They copy The Declaration of Independence with all its Amendments on an egg. Their collections fill a cup. Their oeuvre a spoon. During the war my Father wrote home: I'm not much of a writer. But you know how much I miss you. Jeanne girl. Write soon. A page or two. Love Ed. THINGS I'VE NEVER DONE Are almost too many from the few. Forget how regret has kept me in its chair or vice sleathily crept from room to room shedding every stitch. I've wandered where the rings go through the paper, a fly stuck in the ointment of an afternoon. Letting the familiar feed the script, routine cast its weary net. I'll never adjust an engine's manifold or properly tie a bow, or forgive what's unforgivable, to me at least: anything dietary in a martini. Know how a sparrow can peck what seems like bliss through a crust of March snow alone. Maybe it's the tap of fingers over tabletops winnowing the hours away. How time wants many more breaths to polish its luster. I know it's always too late. Every tree is black and glistening with rain, decisions are wanting, shadows lengthening from poles, uncertainties are flocks of birds wandering from tree to tree unable to commit, settle down, or even tidy up when there's nothing left to read. Even reason's steady hand, a balanced diet, a good cash flow nourishes uncertainty. How every leaf brightens a bit before it falls, and then wrinkles into nothing so it can drift. Copyright 2006-2012 by Cook Communication |