"southeasterly" poems
Before I hide myself away
for another night awake,
I'll look up between letterbox gaps in the broken blind
to see the moon shift six degrees southeasterly and think that
in the next seven hours soft eleven light will leak through as
an alarm-clock-call no one asked for.
Before I walk out the door
for another day of yesterday,
I'll look for the wind coming down the road
to ask it if it's bringing me something new on its coattails.
Ikebana dalliance?
A chance blur with her?
Or something old and the same as before?
Jan 30, 2014
Jan 30, 2014 at 9:06 AM UTC
speeding southeasterly
away from the metropolis
suburban shopping malls give way
to fields of corn
chased by sunflowers between pine forests
the train pushing
with 100 miles per hour
against the heat
of a summer noon
towards the mountains
hidden in a haze
then the ascent
on the old artful track
wheels screeching
at the narrow turns
between occasional small houses
built of stone
a hundredandfifty years ago
the silhouette of a big bird
among the spruce
of cragged peaks
outlined against the sun
steep mountain meadows
mowed in morning coolness
the grass already turning into hay.
my birthplace coming up,
a renovated station,
a short stop,
moving on -
I see
an uphill forest road
on whose high point
a wily stone
thrown long ago with young ferocity
had killed a squirrel
instantly
none of my tears
would make it jump again
and climb up on its tree
with gathering speed downhill,
on through the river valley
flanked by wooded hills,
spiked with farms
and cluttered haystacks,
rushing by
old steeples in old towns
with some new factories,
until a confluence of rivers
another stop.
then turning southward
downhill still
more narrow in the valley
past steep rocks
old castle ruins above sprawling freeways
until the hills recede
and cumulating houses
in a widening basin
suggest the temporary end
of traveling
surprised
I step out
wondering how
to resume
Mar 24, 2015
Mar 24, 2015 at 6:00 AM UTC