Sing to me, o southern hill
where my mother lies,
she near the river
where other children
only her eyes could spy,
her fingers feel.
Willow trees, arcing oaks,
pillows made of amethyst and
amaryllis, beechnut spread,
linen spread by old Mill Creek,
cattle grazing, hazy August
afternoons, all alone was she
except in fantasy.
No love from Mother,
her Father farther
away than Ozymandias.
Tears she used
in her high tea;
no spoon had she.
She wept beneath a yellow sun,
a sister to the gentle sea,
the golden waves of wheat.

Tod Howard Hawks

Are we all not idioms,
peculiar to ourselves
in construct and meaning?
Are not all of us
syntactical anomalies?
Do we not all have elliipses,
lacunae, egregious gaps
in our beings? Lack of
parallel construction in
our lives, dangling like
participles, a pronoun
without its antecedent?
Are not our lives run-
on sentences handed
up by unconscious wishes
and unmet needs? Too
bad we could not be
more declarative and
less rhetorical or
imperative.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

Tell me truly who you are,
not from afar, but to my ear.
Do not fear:  I shall not castigate,
excoriate. Dissemble not: No
equivocation, prevarication.
Tell me truly what's in your heart.
Is terror there, or guilt? Rage ablaze
from needs unmet? Do unhealed hurts
leave you reeling in a maelstrom of
doubt? Open up your heart
and let your agonies fly out.
In gentle ways let us discuss dark
places and shame, give name to
those moments when mistreated,
wanton cruelty misconstrued
with worth of self. Let light
penetrate hate, mollify madness,
assuage pain. Let your forthcoming,
my love for your realness,
heal us both.

A long time ago,
I used to lie on my bed
and look out my window
and watch the big elm tree
as it died slowly.

And I used to watch the cars
as they traveled by,
some fast, some slow,
from right to left, and left to right,
and wonder where they were going to
and coming from.

Once from my window
I hit a bus with my BB gun.
I was scared,
because I knew I wasn't
supposed to shoot buses,
even though it was kind of fun.

And sometimes I used
to hide behind my curtains
and watch the pretty
girls walk by my house
coming back from
the pool in the park.

But mostly I used to lie
on my bed and think,
and watch the big elm tree
as it died slowly.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

It will get dark soon.
The white, yellow, and pink
houses will turn grey,
then black. The cacophony
of car horns will turn into
the chorus of locusts.
Summer's night will lay
a sheet of tranquility over
a city harassed by exigent
matters that matter not.
Soporific silhouettes will
soften the cityscape,
allowing us to escape
the frazzle of the hot day,
exchanging the frenetic
for the peaceful, the welter
for a sense of the well being.
The susurrus of the evening
breeze blows the exhaust
of our polluted lives into
a distant day. Children play
in yards back and front and
laughter wafts through
neighborhoods like the sweet
smell of barbeque, not the
fetid odor of finance and
foreclosures. There is a
sense of closure to this day.
As the sun sets, our eyelids
close, and we pray for the
soft rain of forgiveness.

Copyright 2019 Tod Howard Hawks

We have mined our mountains,
we have fished our seas,
we have felled our forests,
we have gathered our grains,
but we have not yet embraced
the infinite energy of our souls,
which is love.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

I write when the river's down,
when the ground's as hard as
a banker's disposition and as
cracked as an old woman's face.
I write when the air is still
and the tired leaves of the
dying elm tree are a mosaic
against the bird-blue sky.
I write when the old bird dog,
Sam, is too tired to chase
rabbits, which is his habit
on temperate days. I write
when horses lie on burnt grass,
when the sun is always
high noon, when hope melts like
yellow butter near the kitchen
window. I write when there
are no cherry pies in the
oven, when heartache comes
like a dust storm in early
morning. I write when the
river's down, and sadness
grows like cockle burs in
my heart.

Copyright 2019 Tod Howard Hawks