barbarians
Oh yes
we were the first and true barbarians
riding our wild ponies down from fields afar
our hair and shirttails flying out behind us
while we shrieked with glee and daring
holding on to nothing ever we were light
as air new-made and ripe with musk
and possibility
Our happy nights each ended way too soon
the mornings dawned and ever always
much too soon all this of course while
nothing else came soon enough
we tugged at every coming thing
and pulled fast to close the distance
to bring it to our grasp as though
it were a triumph or some signal
of great and lasting import
New affinities dawned each waking day
our blood rose up to meet them each
it hardly mattered what or when or who
and with every bruise or disappointment
assailing us in new confounding ways
we received them as our unfair due
but artistry we gained raw and soon those
potent tools and ripe inventions of our tribe
that early on felt awkward in our hands
yet brilliant with risk and foreign
as our first spoons
Was it all so good such dear confection as
we all tell each other now and was
it all so true or even possible
that all our days were golden then
the time when we were all so full
of everything we were and might become
so eager for the tests
so restless hot and needy
for the next the new the never known
the splendid danger of the first
of all and everything that came
We no longer ride down from those raw hills
to meet each fresh beginning and have learned
to crave peculiar airless things to own or trade
and have forgotten when it was we found
the strange unholy need to hold on to
things not needed
Some nights now won’t come soon enough
and many days that dawn aren’t new enough
we must find our peace in other ways
and satisfaction in the quiet yet remain
some longings still unmet we know
at this far unimagined point in this new
mysterious trajectory and it is still as
foreign as untamed as our beginning
at 3:18
Three in the afternoon
it was I think, or no,
she made a point of
looking at her watch
and saying clearly 3:18
“…and would you like to
wash him first?”
A daughter does not wash
her father—not the man whose
safe consoling chest I sought
to rest my troubled head
in the easy rumble of it soothing
all the raw and restless parts
of me, and surely not
that great immortal man who
just my childish power could calm
and lay aside the cuts and bruises
of his longest days.
Three times, I think, or ten or more
as I remember, his frown and growl
each time would not forbid
my reckless instincts though
there were those other times,
the blast of his dark rages
scorched the earth yet
left no mark on me; he
the sire whose potent body
had made a girl where
there had been none before.
I only smile at those old growls,
but rather laugh and conjure up his
quips, outrageous observations,
wicked wordplay with his
playful mimes that shaped
his supple face made ever brown
by summer sun that followed him
down each row he drove that
roaring monstrous engine.
Rain or sun the farm had made him
strong and clean and good yet plain;
he knew no callousness nor cunning;
his bold and upright answers
left no mistaking truth.
Beneath these graceless hands
that plied the cleansing cloth
on that hard day at 3:18,
and while I washed his naked chest
the sweet warmth I had known
so well faded like a whisper taking
the world and all devotion with it.
No this should never happen
yet so it does and why not
drench with grief and longing
this rough goodbye even
as despair and grace
might meet.
interstices
So where can we find them, those glistening
bits, overlooked, unacknowledged yet calling
to us from distances of our day-to-day?
If we see them or if we don’t, still they
whisper in the rain and dart among the trees
of every hazy forest like wind or a light we
see only in the half-blink of an eye, as in
a spinning top, or windows of a passing train,
and almost there among the ripples in some
green river or waking in the fresh moments
of an unexpected morning.
It’s in the gaps between things, like apertures
of a side-blown flute, bright intervals we don’t
hear or see with eyes distracted as they are
by the things themselves,
as in sunlight through the window blinds,
private possibilities, unspoken truths. Through
time we may regard but may not recognize jewels
shyly blinking there in the in-between, in small
hops of imagination, not intending to show
themselves or proclaim, but rather
waiting to be discovered
or missed.
They can surprise us when we suppose
we’re simply looking for something else.
But what of uncounted times we do not,
can not notice them in a disappearing day
or in a lifetime?
Regret would consume us if we could know
it is the tender in-between places we’ve lost, and
where what’s true and shining happens, where
we could have been stunned by some brief perfection
or some little pleasure where we might have
played in places unimagined
and unforgettable.
I’ve been a working writer/editor and a closet poet all my life, but my time is short now and through poetry, I’m probing the past’s bruises, joys, and wounds. My three published books are: “Small Wonders,” “Treasure in Clay Jars, and “Little Church at the Head of the Bay.” My first (and only—so far) published novel is “Limestone County Almanac.” I’ve been sharing my verses with writers’ groups and classes of late and hope to share them with a wider audience now if there’s an open door somewhere.