A CIRCLE
OF MINTS
I found a talisman in the copier.
Bubblewrap body and push pin eyes,
wound in bronze wire and hanging
over the sorter mechanism.
Boughs of cedar lined the by-pass tray,
tightly accordioned in colored thread—
and it was then that I realized
there
was
a wiccan
in the office.
A paperclip fetish guards the server.
There's an unexpected package from
Hidden Driveway Lake ticking
in the FedEx box.
The cleaning guys tell stories
of toads in the stairwell, of
ceiling vent whispers and full moons
breached by shuttering blinds.
There's a circle of mints in the lobby
—a wintergreen hoop stepped around—
keeping not so much the dead as
perhaps, the under-living away.
__
CIVIL WARS
A parlor tick shaken—a rattled tock
A screendoor's twang and snap
Rustle and gust—the retreat of swallows
across a tassel-stained
sky
Schematics of lightning clear the pools carved
like trenchwork
across
this place
Northern enough to fire a hard coal furnace yet
Southern enough
to cultivate broadleaf shade
Western enough and Eastern enough
to be neither
here nor there—this place
Crossroads of blue and grey
nimbus and
stratocumulus
Host to incompatible fronts
a skirmish
of drive-throughs
along County
Line Road—this place
No stranger to the anomalies of air
the thunder's
roll
wind's
pitch
funnel's
yaw
The fervor of basement vespers
lullabies
against the ordnance
and the splinter
of spires
The pale nightlight of a firefly cradled
in a cupped
palm dome
as the leadshot
shatters the isinglass
__
ROAD FROM HAMLIN
We are the children whom they test childproof lighters
on.
Immortalized in two-hour photo developing,
remembered
for our milkcarton smiles.
Spirited away by strangers with candy; appropriated by jinns.
Suckled at the teat of Lilith, cradled with an old medley of
custody battle
hymns and schoolbus sing-alongs.
Hand in hand, following the dry riverbeds from Hamlin,
we are the children who negotiate the dark by taste,
navigate the
chainlink perimeters by touch.
We hide when our names are yelled across fields,
read by flashlight shined under thickets, mix our crayons
from clays
found along the river.
Descending at dusk from the shadow of timberlines,
we're spied under a waning gibbous running the box canyons,
stomping play circles into slumbering corn.
Like tricks of light we slip among the tamarisks.
Glimmering, we are fireflies cupped in a silhouette of palms.
Opened, we disperse into the night like stars.
____
Civil Wars is a Midwest lament. It's
so much easier writing about places
once you've left them far behind.
R oad from Hamlin is a poem to accompany
wind and flashlights.
A Circle of Mints celebrates the magical
powers of office machinery and the deep life-long sighs that they drown
out. |