Flamethrower Super Heros

Finches crowd the feeders
as a masked man fills the suet
sucking in his own stale air.
We all looked alike for over a year.
Maybe to them we always did.
Masks made from tee shirts,
faded rags from under the sink,
repurposed under the foot
of dusty sewing machines
pulled out of closets.

With thread directed through the eye
of a world that tightened around us,
we grew suspicious and more alone.
In the evening we howled off porches
like wolves at the moon
          (doomed one day to follow them gone)
sang from balconies and from behind barricades
for our flamethrower super heroes
who lived in hotels and slept on cots
to save this suicidal world
from behind their masks.

With these in mind: Absence of Color from Poets and Storytellers and Earthweal (poetry for a changing world), I dusted off an old subject that went and grew legs. 

Walk In The Dark

 In the quiet splendor of a predawn morn
the moon gilds the hoophouse in shiny opulence.

Lace riven configurations circle the sky

with the moon at their apex high above the earth

circling quiet, like a giant snow globe—

how could one ever think this world flat?

And I, an inconsequential ant of a being

Invades the quiet on a shuffle across the frozen grass

in my husband’s boots and a hand-me-down coat

and my daddy’s hat with the flashlight of my mother’s trepidation

in my pocket just in case.

But if you walk in the dark you see the dark,

the dark a friend if you see it thus,

but chickens need light as much as scratch and

I flick the switch in the pumphouse to juice one newly

installed that said husband thinks will fool them

into thinking we've reached beyond the darkest day

but they only blink and murmur and stir on their roost. 

An owl hootsfrom a branch with blood on his mind 

and I stop to gaze upwards in dizzying amaze

at the splendor of this quiet morn there for all to see if we but look up.

Happy Thanksgiving. May it be a peaceful one.   

Reminded to be thankful (and praising) by Brendan at Earthweal, 

with his shared story of the Austrian poet Rilke...

And if the earthly no longer knows your name

whisper to the silent earth: I'm flowing. To the flashing water say: I am.

A Troubled Man To The Lighthouse Goes

The night watchman
(a troubled man)
on a given day
when all the birds sing
to the lighthouse goes.
Once a gentleman in Moscow,
under rumors of war
undertakes the voyage
with a golden compass
to a promised Garden of Eden
but it was a risk pool
and no country for old men.

This poem was composed from the titles on my bookshelf in response to the challenge at dVerse (the pub where poets hang out) to compose a poem from the books on your shelf. (Spine Poetry) I had fun and rediscovered some old friends.



 

Main Street Carryout

Chairs upturned on tables
in the sad empty restaurant
where the ghost of a warm-up band,
and the clink of ice echo in the dark.
Footsteps from the kitchen,
a light under the door.
Masked faces dart across the street
with styrofoam boxes.


Written for the Open Link Night at dVerse, the poets pub, and in celebration of National Poetry Writing Month.

Fairyland

Dressing in the dark in winter clothes
I turn on the coffee to a rising death toll.
Under stay-at-home orders and weeping skies
I need a haircut and larder supplies.
Jigsaw puzzle spread out on a table,
piece by piece I construct a town.
Tulips, groomed grass, and houses that house people.
Lecture halls and libraries and bustling alehouses.
Bartenders with white towels wiping down bars,
Cracking jokes and drawing pints in a fairy tale land. 
With writings and books and time for it all
I should be content but I miss my pals.


Linked up with Earthweal and the weekly challenge,"Flattening The Curve".

To date in America there are 183,000 cases of Covid-19 and 3,774 deaths, a sobering number as it doubled in two days.