Two bridges rise from the Hudson today,
calm after the wind and snow of the day
before. Knowing the way water remembers
they go on when the river ends — over
soil rich with memory’s leavings. They
settle above the line of a hundred year
flood. The one intended to survive an
unthinkable war has turned to consider
the rust red other imagining a train
it will not stop believing the last word
long after crowds have learned to begin
every journey without putting a foot down,
to cross rivers wider than this without once
touching the ground. No track. No sound. No trace.
Category Archives: poetry
Uncle Roger
Despite MS
he rises before dawn
puts on camo and worn boots
painstakingly slow
canes his way to the pickup
and pulls his trailered Bad Boy*
to his favorite bend on the creek
leans against the fender
dragging his useless leg
climbs aboard, stalks
to a frost-covered cedar blind
waits the pride of the hunt.
I remember as boys we walked
briskly alongside his cheerful banter
following quail into plum thickets
his good legs and eyes then
helped us learn an ethic
we have never forgotten
And now he still burns
stoking the embers of survival.
In due time, when death
has arrived, when the kill
has occurred, he crawls to the buck
guts it on his knees, wraps
a chain around its hocks, crawls
back to the Bad Boy, winches it
up and on to the trailer,
ties it down, then wills himself
back into the driver’s seat,
drives home worn out –
a tired legacy he honors.
* a battery-powered cart
Position Title: Philosophy Instructor
essential physical demands
read. analyze. interpret. apply.
respond to common inquiries.
read. write. speak. hear.
add. subtract. divide. multiply.
perform. define.
collect. establish
facts. draw conclusions.
interpret. speculate. design
future outcomes from known
and unknown. deal. address
situations. face problems.
meet challenges. formulate solutions.
the employee is frequently required to stand,
to walk, to use fingers and hands
the employee is occasionally required to sit,
to reach with hands and arms
the employee must occasionally lift and/or
move. the employee must occasionally lift and/
or move with both hands, arms open.
A Professor before Dawn
In another time
he would be a cowboy.
He still wears boots and hat,
carries a leather briefcase
up the back steps
before dawn into an office.
A magniloquent moon hanging
above the trees
lights his nocturnal habits.
He turns a key to get the day
going. He will log in,
check email, review lesson plans
and feel the hard bite of the saddle
between his thighs, thinking
about wide open spaces
and the calling that will not
let him go.
Guest poet, Larry D. Thomas
Larry D. Thomas lives in Alpine, Texas, with his wife, Lisa, and two Long-haired Chihuahuas, Pecos and Pinyon. He spends his days listening to the winds of the Great Chihuahuan Desert, and writing poetry. A member of the Texas Institute of Letters and the 2008 Texas Poet Laureate, he has published eighteen collections of poetry, most recently A Murder of Crows (Virtual Artists Collective 2011) and The Red, Candle-lit Darkness (El Grito del Lobo Press 2011).
His Hard Art
in memory of Hart Crane
chose him and made him so facile
in the musical juggling of words
he could only speak in verse.
With his scalpel of perception,
in dissecting evil,
he stumbled upon the bones
of Lucifer, the Angel of Light.
It drowned him like a thrashing kitten
in the black well of consciousness,
leaving him the claw of his pen
to climb his way out, opening
his eyes wide and crazing them
with glimmer. But the sheen of oil
spilled on the sea in the sun
was enough to kill him.
Voices
Late at night, in the candle-lit
stillness of the sanctuary,
far beneath the steep,
slated pitch of a roof
so high a sky looms blue
beneath it, she genuflects.
She and she alone
knows they’re all still there,
each and every one,
penetrating her crystalline heart
like lasers ricocheting
ad infinitum
off stained glass, stone and oak,
each prayer prayed
and each hymn sung
for hundreds of years,
whooshing through her soul
like swallows.
The Summit: For the Sage of Shawnee: Jim Spurr
The Summit: For the Sage of Shawnee: Jim Spurr
Rumors of a sage living in Oklahoma
disseminating wisdom like some Okie Yoda
Pez dispenser reached the Gulf Coast of Texas.
In serious need of any wisdom freely given,
I climbed into my Malibu and headed north.
The rumors said this sage held court
in a high place in or around Shawnee,
so I headed to the Arbuckles, climbed
all fourteen hundred feet to the highest peak,
to find an old fellow sitting there in bib overalls
and a John Deere hat. “I suppose you looking
for the Sage of Shawnee? Suppose you heard
he held court at a high place and expected to find
him here. Well, he ain’t me. I just work here shooing
the ill informed away from these dangerous peaks.
The one you seek can be found at this here address.”
I thanked the man for his guidance, fired up
my GPS and arrived at the bottom of an endless
staircase that took me two days to climb. I finally
arrived at the top, beset with doubts. (I mean
if this guy was so freaking smart why didn’t he teach
in a place with an elevator?) I arrived to find a sign
that said Welcome to Knuckles, and sitting alone
at a table next to the bar was this man with Shawnee
emblazoned on his t-shirt. He looked at me
and said, “My name’s Spurr. Take a load off.
I once went to college in this here town. Read a book
by a monk named Rabelais. It was long-ass book
too. I read it in chapel. I never liked chapel much,
but that’s another story. Anyhow, this rebel monk
at the end of his long assed book said the meaning
of life can be found in the clinking of wine glasses,
but he was French you see, so he didn’t quite get it
right. Barkeep!” In front of us appeared two cold mugs
filled with beer. “Cheers mate!” We clinked glasses.
And in that one clear note, I’ll be damned
if I didn’t begin to understand.
Guest poet, Jim Spurr
Jim Spurr: Distinguished 82nd Airborne Veteran ~ Poet Laureate of Shawnee, Oklahoma ~ Moderator of the very popular monthly Open Mic ~ Happily married to Aline ~ Award-winning author of Open Mike/Thursday Night and Hail Mary, On Two
The Medics Are At The Door and The Band Is Playing Loud
“ They were a long way from home
in a crowded hall where everyone
who could join in joined in.
They could hear the music.
They could feel it. It would be a part
of the healing process. “
Statement by: “The Hospital Administrator”
A steady cadence
pounded the sheet vinyl floor
accompanied by
an early day rock drummer
smilin’ and catchin’ his sticks
in mid air.
Patients moving in and out
in smooth quick step
while
chanting a Blue Cross Be-Bop beat
complimented by an array
of musical arrangements
screaming that they were
… a part of the cure.
Doctors and nurses not so sure
but willing to listen
to the shrill opera of last year’s hip hop
along with
Mister Boots Randolph’s
Yakkety-Yak Sax alone and loud
in an old country corner store
with tables out back on the patio
and everything depending on
the rhythm section to do
what the rhythm section was supposed
to do in the first place.
Furnish a healthy heartbeat.
Making Art
Nervous as a skunk
this art-making
takes a lot of nose-first
digging, scrounging garbage
cans turned on their side
clattering in a dirty breeze,
rattling like death caught
in your throat – you crawl
inside, sniff and snoop
until something clings to you –
you grasp at it, try to make it
yours – anything you might use
to coerce an audience,
anything to make trash
seem sweet enough to color
your cagey stripes.
weather
the ragged edge of a storm
undeniable as the ocean
between us every way
i turn paints the sky
this morning
unsettling settling
on a great wind always
brooding on the face of some deep,
on a great bird, mind flying
when the seas are heaving, on
the laughter of a cicada dreaming
the voice of the turtle, rising
ninety thousand miles on
the spiral of a ram’s horn,
where do you think you are
going? a hop and a skip
unsettles the ocean
and that is as high
as anyone can fly,
from one breath to another
Red Dirge
red-tipped fescue,
red sumac, ivy,
berries and cedar bark
– even the water is red
like old blood known
in Autumn rituals –
blood as familiar
as it is foreign,
ordinarily strange
like turning leaves