The Month drags on...
April 9:
The scratching behind the wall
sounds like Morse code.
Does the family of squirrels know that?
Is this what survival dictates?
that in our metropolitan fortress
the outsiders turn militant,
pillage our wears, our refuse,
and plan assaults mere feet
away from our beds?
April 10:
Yesterday, I threw a pen.
Eccentric perhaps. Mundane enough.
But to throw from thirty stories up,
my mundane actions can kill
a bike messenger, a sidewalk musician,
but the real headline grabber
would be a preacher or bishop.
It would spread city-wide panic about
a atheist maniac who kills wih physics,
and lead authorities to speculate
what diabolical tools I'll use next-
perhaps a thousand sewing needles
dropped from private plan
or marbles flung with malaise
from a speeding bullet train.
Given enough speed or mass,
anything can kill and
everything becomes suspect.
April 11:
Walking with a Ghost of the World
Scars that are white and immune
to sunburn turn bright red in the cold
as I trail Dad across another hillock,
guns pointing to where the beagles
had been swallowed by the trees
that stretch up like fingers against the sky.
Winter bites me hard on the shoulder,
teething through a hole in the seams,
grazes a finger along the unyielding joints,
and whispers sharp numbness in my ear
with the voice of a lost opera singer,
the snow providing perfect acoustics.
It shadows every pine tree, peeks out
at us from under our boots, curious at
what drives us onward,
pokes at Dad’s knees and prods my cheeks,
pulling away faces to reveal intentions
that hide only in our trigger fingers.
So much is absent from the woods now,
the songbirds, bears, and deer of Summer,
it seems wrong to take what’s left for Winter,
but this is Dad’s tradition, hunting
fluorescent pheasants hiding beneath the high
yellow grass Winter has bent to conceal them.
Winter is lonely among the empty trees
abandoned of songs, it turns the silence
into symphonies conducted with icicles.
Silence like heard no other time.
Unpolluted, choking silence until we
cannot hear the jingling of dog bells.
Winter doesn’t trust the feel of us,
naked beneath our tattered goatskins
and frayed flannels,
doesn’t trust a people that keep
a piece of Spring locked away in
every home and business.
It smells intentions on the backs of dogs,
and knows us now as thieves.
It reaches through my skin to hold back
my bones until I struggle to lurch forward,
a jello man of muscle and sinew,
as Dad begins to cry, his knees giving
way beneath him, his arthritic fingers tucked
away inside pigskin gloves growing
brittle from the frost that pulls them
back from the trigger. Winter knows him,
has seen him before with thieves and dogs,
knows exactly where will break him.
Spiteful Winter plays with pheasant scent
like a spool of yarn, drapes it around
branchless trees, tucks it under flat rocks,
and into tree holes that could not fit
a chipmunk. Tied to the tail of a dog,
we find them circling one another.
Dad says we came too late in season,
the pheasants are long gone by now.
I agree, but think we came simply
when Winter’s generosity was strained,
when the worth of pheasant tracks in snow
mean more than two visiting thieves.
The scratching behind the wall
sounds like Morse code.
Does the family of squirrels know that?
Is this what survival dictates?
that in our metropolitan fortress
the outsiders turn militant,
pillage our wears, our refuse,
and plan assaults mere feet
away from our beds?
April 10:
Yesterday, I threw a pen.
Eccentric perhaps. Mundane enough.
But to throw from thirty stories up,
my mundane actions can kill
a bike messenger, a sidewalk musician,
but the real headline grabber
would be a preacher or bishop.
It would spread city-wide panic about
a atheist maniac who kills wih physics,
and lead authorities to speculate
what diabolical tools I'll use next-
perhaps a thousand sewing needles
dropped from private plan
or marbles flung with malaise
from a speeding bullet train.
Given enough speed or mass,
anything can kill and
everything becomes suspect.
April 11:
Walking with a Ghost of the World
Scars that are white and immune
to sunburn turn bright red in the cold
as I trail Dad across another hillock,
guns pointing to where the beagles
had been swallowed by the trees
that stretch up like fingers against the sky.
Winter bites me hard on the shoulder,
teething through a hole in the seams,
grazes a finger along the unyielding joints,
and whispers sharp numbness in my ear
with the voice of a lost opera singer,
the snow providing perfect acoustics.
It shadows every pine tree, peeks out
at us from under our boots, curious at
what drives us onward,
pokes at Dad’s knees and prods my cheeks,
pulling away faces to reveal intentions
that hide only in our trigger fingers.
So much is absent from the woods now,
the songbirds, bears, and deer of Summer,
it seems wrong to take what’s left for Winter,
but this is Dad’s tradition, hunting
fluorescent pheasants hiding beneath the high
yellow grass Winter has bent to conceal them.
Winter is lonely among the empty trees
abandoned of songs, it turns the silence
into symphonies conducted with icicles.
Silence like heard no other time.
Unpolluted, choking silence until we
cannot hear the jingling of dog bells.
Winter doesn’t trust the feel of us,
naked beneath our tattered goatskins
and frayed flannels,
doesn’t trust a people that keep
a piece of Spring locked away in
every home and business.
It smells intentions on the backs of dogs,
and knows us now as thieves.
It reaches through my skin to hold back
my bones until I struggle to lurch forward,
a jello man of muscle and sinew,
as Dad begins to cry, his knees giving
way beneath him, his arthritic fingers tucked
away inside pigskin gloves growing
brittle from the frost that pulls them
back from the trigger. Winter knows him,
has seen him before with thieves and dogs,
knows exactly where will break him.
Spiteful Winter plays with pheasant scent
like a spool of yarn, drapes it around
branchless trees, tucks it under flat rocks,
and into tree holes that could not fit
a chipmunk. Tied to the tail of a dog,
we find them circling one another.
Dad says we came too late in season,
the pheasants are long gone by now.
I agree, but think we came simply
when Winter’s generosity was strained,
when the worth of pheasant tracks in snow
mean more than two visiting thieves.