I was banging on the big wooden front door
with both fists
there were little square windows
each framed with four mitered corners.
I could see into the church
people singing and raising their hands
but I couldn't get in.

I have many dreams at night
almost all of them forgotten
but in this near-waking state
I knew this one meant something
I needed to pay attention.

Pay attention
what a phrase!

Moving my hands and arms
across the canvas
with the brush in two shades of red
lavishing the northeast corner toward southeast
next to blacks and blues.
Yellows now circling like covered wagons
into the blossom of a daisy.
These strokes took care
in praise of pigments
throwing a few coins for toll
just costly enough to
keep me moving west
the sun not yet setting.

There are always doors
or blinds I cannot open
nearly as easily as I would like
too heavy or out of reach.
Patience also costly.
Like attention.

Slender and humble in its youth
the oak grew in moist earth near the bayou.
Roots pierced the dark land
ate the rich gumbo
silently morphed facets of soil
into a heart
with unexposed power and poise.

Across the bayou
on a screened porch
a young girl watched the new rain
make puffs of dust in the dirt
she daydreamed in the drifts of clouds
and wondered where they were born.

A young man and his friend
off the beaten path of their travels
found the town pool.
Swimming, he saw the beautiful girl
perched above the deep end
and across longitudes and latitudes
of loving, laughing, and weeping
they birthed and raised a family.

The bark’s ridges and gaps reveal
centuries of storms and floods
the oak’s long limbs laden
with life, wisdom, and altered environments.

These two entwined lives enriched
by learning and prodigious practice
their wine a vintage
of passionate enchantment
imbibed by thirsty learners
across decades beyond ordinary borders.

But she like the oak
with open arms
her strength born in good soil.
Hers is a rare power of gentle love
hers a courage born
of some cosmic connection
at the heart of her beautiful humanity.

Dedicated to my cousin Melanie on her eightieth birthday. Both of us born in the Durand line in southern Louisiana not too far from the Evangeline Oak near Bayou Teche. Our lives were seemingly divergent but somehow parallel and ultimately connected, I think, by a power greater than ourselves. If you are interested in more, please see: https://www.currierpoems.net/teche-series

I went to my friend
almost afraid to expose the need
I found as I read the book,
not knowing if he would be deaf to it.
As I spoke of my father
who was not there
to show his boy how to be a man
I recounted my losses
and the load of grief I felt.

My sadness clung to me
a heavy suit of chainmail on a dark knight.
I could feel my face
drooping in lamentation
unable to be the smiling grinning buddy
I normally brought to the room.

Seemingly unable to enter into my pain,
my friend, a man of great intellect, character and conviction,
responded only with a litany of his own.
I tried to listen but my burden
made it a mighty climb.

Now I know my pal is only human
and I am wrestling
with my self
sweating MY
deafness.

Driving home from the airport
from High Ridge Road we peered at downtown.
I told our visitor
this is the view tourists like
looking at the city from afar
or driving past its monuments.
But if you really want to see the city
you have to smell the streets the morning after
or visit Aunt Stella in her trailer.

That night we did just that
laughing with the folks
sitting on her old stuffed couch
and on rickety folding chairs
she’d fetched from the bedroom closet.

We listened to Fred
leaning over his old guitar
playing it as if it were a woman.
His voice was gravel
but when he sang falsetto
I could see him in his mother’s arms.

Stella quietly left for the kitchen
and brought back beers
and saltines and sharp cheddar cheese,
Fred still crooning softly.
We were completely mesmerized by him
and his humble country charm.

As I sat there with our visitor
I was again a boy at home with Mama
and Daddy who’d just got in from the plant
in his khaki pants and shirt  
smudges of oil on his sleeves
smelling of the day’s sweat.

It is a profusion of earth
direct to my brain
in one breath
its brown luxury
sensual and sultry
a lover's naked warmth
under heavy quilts o a cold winter's morn.

It ignores inner constraints
penetrates points of pleasure
hidden deep and unnoticed
until I open this new can of coffee.

The slugger swept the bases
his swift run for home past third  
blew away the dusty traces
his teammates had stirred.

She precisely whisked flour
with oil, eggs, and spice
but played til such a late hour
she had to mix it twice.

The coach signaled a sacrifice fly
but he wanted to slam it
not a martyr kind of guy
so he hit a homer ******!

You might want to make dough
but you’d have to prove the matter
to get your fund and asset to grow
don’t forget you’re mixing a human batter.

“To write is to go looking for what I don’t even know myself before I write it.”
- Annie Ernaux, winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature

I went into the dark canyon
not knowing where it would lead -
another adventure
taken up to pursue a dream,
my hand holding the reins
not knowing what lie ahead
nor what I was looking for.

The notion that led me here
words in my head
the meaning of which were a cypher so cryptic
I knew not what quest I would wrest from them.

But I had been told that this riding
was an exploration of the unknown.
That I was just a hapless pioneer
in a borderless land,
a wilderness
requiring a spindly surrender.