Poetry

a painting
of a boy
playing on the beach . . .
the sea now swollen
swallowing the man

Monsieur Beaufont, an aristocrat from Paris, is throwing a housewarming party. He’s just migrated to New Orleans with his family and has encouraged his wife to sing for the guests.

Bernard, in scuffed penny loafers and faded felt fedora, is always fashionably late but today his arrival is almost posthumous. He trundles past his host with a muttered “Thank you” and makes his way to a back corner of the parlor, his trademark slouch defying gravity only with the help of a hickory cane, and now, the wall.

I’ve known Bernard since childhood. We met during a match of marbles on the school playground and later played football together. He’s since amassed a small fortune navigating the mines in the stock market and by keeping the strings pulled tight on his purse. His lips barely move when he speaks, something he does only under duress. He rarely ventures out these days so it’s a surprise to see him here now. I consider going over to speak with him but he’s commanding the corner with a scowl.

Bernard has one magnetic attribute that we share, a passion for classical music. Symphonies, arias, concertos, and minuets arouse his spirit. I know not to disrupt him while Cassandra is singing a capella Puccini’s “Un bel dì vedremo” from Madame Butterfly. Perhaps we’ll have a brief conversation when he’s done applauding.

Cassandra, a striking soprano fills the stately room with a voice much larger than her petite self. The flaxen-haired nightingale brings tears to Bernard’s eyes. I watch him lean over his cane, straining to absorb every syllable, every note as she casts her spell on the listeners.
When the song ends, Bernard leans his cane against his belly and begins to clap. I wander over and wait for him to finish, then proclaim “That was wonderful!”

“It was not enough,” he grumbles.

“Perhaps she’ll sing another,” I suggest.

“Maybe. I’ve got to pee.”

I watch him hobble to the washroom. Cassandra comes over and introduces herself. Bernard should be here. I tell her how much I enjoyed the song. She says, “Thank you” then moves on to the next guest. I’m left to wonder if there was ever a goddess so graceful, anyone as lucky as Monsieur Beaufont, or a man as untimely as Bernard.

consulting
the hands
of a broken watch
the captain sets sail
on a low tide

First published in Contemporary Haibun Online

wind plays
in fields i once roamed
a billion
blades of grass bending
with the shifting sky

What you saw on that empty hillside many decades ago, I’ll never really know because you carried that vision with you into the earth. What you made of it though, remains a pleasant memory even if time has wasted no time in etching it slowly away. The shelves in the spare room have other people’s stuff on them now. The cobwebs in the attic are new. The rock garden has been ripped out but ants in the yard are still building castles in the sand.

I can remember the creaky sequence of five doors opening and closing through the garage and into the kitchen. A wooden thunk, a spring, a click, a gentle yawn, a clunk. Did you purposely build that into my memories of you? I mean, there you were on the foundation of your dreams raising a home where I could come alive. What I took away from that is nothing less than the stuff of a mythical adventure.

Still, it wasn’t a structure that stood at the center of my universe. It was you. Wood and stone and plaster were no match for your wit, patience, and capacity to love and forgive. What you built beside that little hill can’t be measured with watch or stick. Every year the leaves come falling down. I’m sorry, I can’t rake them all, but that never really mattered to you, now did it?

dreams conceived beneath the stars
have returned to the meadow
where life remains
a poem on the lips
of a child

I tilt my head left to right to left, then forward and back to forward. Roll it around. Shrug my shoulders down, then up, down, then up. Fingers squeeze, stretch, squeeze, stretch. Rotate wrists—bend at the knees, bend, stand and bend. Now at the waste, touch my toes, breathing in, breathing out. Shake it, shake it. Put on some jazz—the needle in the groove popping and crackling . . . settle in at my desk.

The pen is mightier . . . it’s so proclaimed.
I press the keys
and set out to prove it . . .

worldwide love
on the nightly news—
dreaming up
a brand new brand
of species

fog swirls
over roads once strolled
shadows drifting
in the folds of my mind
forming stories in the gray

It’s 9 pm. A truck stop in the distance peers from the dark, welcoming. The on-ramp is quiet, and it’s been a weary day. I hoist my backpack and head toward the lights, three dollars in my pocket, with the goal in mind to get myself a cup or two of hot chicken broth.

I push the button on the coffee machine and a cup drops down. A stream of broth begins to flow. It’s the only thing I can stomach from this device. It will keep me warm for the moment, a little comfort to remind me of home, a 25-cent swallow or two of Heaven on the road. Put another quarter in the slot, order a second helping of sustenance before stepping back out into the neon Iowa night.

I approach a truck driver and ask if he might give me a lift. He tells me the corporation forbids giving anyone a ride. Trudging back to the on-ramp, I study the glow of lightning deep in the distant sky. For three hours, cars and trucks drive by, ignoring my thumb as if it was a mile marker. Exhaustion sets in. It’s time to sleep, but where? I watch the lightning edge closer. Between the rumble of engines, thunder.

I walk into the tall grass between the highway and the on-ramp, pull out my sleeping bag and hunker down. Headlights sweep over me as the traffic flows. I toss and turn as the wind picks up and the storm approaches.

There’s no such thing as sleep. As the first hint of dawn arrives, lightning dazzles the world around. Just as I finish rolling up my bag, the rain begins to patter. Before I get to the road, I’m drenched in a Midwest monsoon.

I’m standing in a light show, taking a shower, the cold wind chafing my bones. Thumb extended from a shivering arm, car after truck after car after truck. Will I melt into this puddle growing at my feet?

Finally, a minivan pulls over, rusted and a hundred-years-old. I jog to the door. The driver tells me, “Put your pack in the back.” I settle in and we’re off. “Sorry,” he says, “the heater doesn’t work.” I stare down at cracks in the pavement through holes in the ancient floor.

the pilgrim
on a journey through time
finds a broken watch
realizes he’s arrived
just in time

for Johanna.

halls painted
in dancing candlelight . . .
my breathing tuned
to the echoes
of your footsteps

How could a memory from 40-years ago tug at me as yours does now? How did you manage to grow in my psyche with such strong roots? I invited you in long ago. But, I thought when we parted, you took what was yours and left. But, damn it; you left me with a smile and a hug and a kiss and a photo of you beaming like the sun. Every year or two, I take it out and there you are, a moment in my life when love took me by the hand and waltzed me into the future. Now, here I stand with the seeds you planted flourishing in my mind. Looking down at my feet, 40-years spent living in your garden doesn’t seem like a very long time.

a breeze
orchestrates the wind chimes . . .
tapping my feet
to the rhythm of your heart
carried around in my head

First published in Contemporary Haibun Online 20.1