Roads and People

[Fantods1]

On a cold spring
Morning, caught
In all our waking
Hours, the sun rises
Out of the deep pines
It is our friend, see
Him read the lay
Of the promised land
The networks of roads and people-
See him shout down the
Close brick houses
Drunk as Dionysus as summer turns-
Or a wildcat weeping as we sing dirges
A pregnant mother’s laugh at celebration songs
He is our friend, happy as can be
Washing the blood from the night,
That same dawn- that same dawn what breaks
Over and over.

[Fantods1]

Merienda on the flat
Trained grasses, the Palmo wakes up
With a glass of cool water
The halfcast irons rustle through a gold
Copse, the stairs creak on your front porch
I remember Tuesdays in September
Rasping out Hank Williams
Fixing my ten speed in the sun
Again the trains interrupted the liturgy
Pictures of my mother’s first dance recital

Shaken awake in the predawn
My heart pounds like sneakers in the wash
As I think of what may have gone wrong

[Fantods1]

Running on the telephone lines
of our first drive
A bee lands silent as the sleeping watch
on a blossom newly bloomed-
The professor learning a new tune
which she hits all at once; yes,
Praised stitches fade under posterity’s dull blaze
and crowd the green, sweet ground
Like some branded hope. He, sweeping you
off your feet, says
Don’t you know the movie theaters in the ghetto
play my old dreams.

[Fantods1]

Slowly towards the brown splintered
dock, we cut placidity with four
Cool waves in our wake, you say
I’m a cat on a hot tin roof but
The worlds too loud for my click-
If only it did, the plaid wearing
boy could’ve called out,
Trailing behind, so now I speak quiet
while you lift eyes to the sun
So close I am scared, but the gull flits,
Hotlike, pinned to the sky.

[Lykren]

You're really good.

[Fantods1]

thank you Lykren!