AFTER AUGUST
somewhere beneath a sun
that occasionally disappears
and out beyond the places where
passing time and traveling money combine,
further on than the wind
that blows the sounds of smokey brass
through iron flora, over patterned paths,
sleeps again the torso of the sea
one arm wrapped calmly around
the hips of our city
where we give those restful
tidal dreams our blessings
breathing, in the same breaths,
a trembling and unconvinced hope
for our lives once overtaken
by a tossing nightmare of a summer sea
to somehow find again
a cadence, calm and confidently without
the alien desperation we’ve felt growing
within the walls of our homes and whining
in the hinges of aluminum signs
swaying streetside and ignored,
without the malicious hush
that replaced the familiarity
of chattering foot traffic
in the last anger years
after august
• • • • • • •
Inside, Out Among Our Place
From this wooden perch,
swaying lightly
with my weight on my elbows,
there are in my view
many sights that promise to
be warm and held true as soil
until it is the soil itself that swells
and the sun is taken again from us.
Robert builds with quiet hands
a small fiber corner in the shadows
of a patient yet ailing roof
and he leans against
the exposed insipid-white ribs
that are also
waiting.
Ms. Johnston, in her proud anger,
rubs the loose skin of her knees
bending in her seat with hardly any sound.
Her voice is seldom except to speak.
Feels like spotting the charcoal arches
of a lone porpoise from the shore
seeing that it is traveling
but having no idea to where.
She comments on how
quiet the streets are now and you know
that she is missing him.
Little Cameron lost her bracelet
and passes, in the medium shade, swaying
her head and neck from left to right
and back like a lighthouse
bites the corners of her lower lip
and seems as if she has also
managed to misplace the memories
that might make a child want
to stay inside.
Several cars grind by
blue, and brown, all dusty.
It is more evident than ever which drivers
are bound for home and which are looking
for sights they wish they hadn’t seen.
The price of tours, to some,
sometimes seem
exploitive.
We call her Lulu, because that name
is quicker than her legal name, or
maybe because it is truer than her honest name.
She waddles in to make her say
stating the money still hasn’t come and
the heat is becoming inconvenient.
We all know she has larger wrongs to voice,
but respectfully presents only the smaller
a public word.
The smell here the past years
has been unfamiliar, not like
the hint of home each of us carries differently,
more like walking into a hotel lobby
or hospital room that’s just been cleaned.
The difference, I think, was stirred up
from beneath our feet,
or maybe it washed in from the south.
With my feet here, firm on this floor
above the matted ground,
I can see this place in which
I have kept my house and
saved my friends.
Here up on these boards,
I know where I am
and all those that have chosen
to be here with me,
each a wandering piece
of an aimless circle.
• • • • • • •
Herein, Where History Lives
We are all at the end
of a line of some length,
with proud-mouthed fathers,
mothers we may know,
may heavily remember.
Our pasts precede us
endlessly and without knowing
what plans we have
for crossing other paths,
tying relative knots
or making friendly tangles
We take turns,
like good school children,
eyes ahead to those preceding
those beside.
We’ve all seen life,
a die rolling across a crowd
of blind canes tapping
on each other’s ankles,
and sometimes when
the wind is low
and the birds have come back
we will deliver in short words
what our two eyes, two ears
have received over time.
So let’s, on the coming days
of careless birds and sun exposed,
gather in the shade and
remember with no whispered words
those sudden sea,
the thunder heard,
the rain that stayed
and choked our roots.
Then we will know the story
of all our storms.
• • • • • • •
Aside, Where Efforts Complement
When the clammer of chaos stopped
and learned to work in silence
where no pen or camera could be put to it,
we knew solitary desperations
and they seeped into every bit we owned,
dragged their hungry fingers across
every inch we’d earned.
They were partly our backs
that rose this roof and
put these walls upright.
Not one name, but
a circle of names
to list on the door.
A congregation of cheeks, a
meeting of eager hands
in this place where we all come
for a common quiet
and other eyes that know
what ours are looking for.
We are here and
our hidden grottos, our
fragmented shelters
are empty now
while we are out together
gathering light and air.
Wow