Tuesday, June 2, 2009

I saw the sign again today

Outside the Conoco Tri-Mart
With your name
& Welcome Home
You came back
out of nowhere
To wreck the silhouettes
That I’ve constructed


Your jeep tires spun
endlessly
I see them in the cold
Bed-sheets
Wide awake but dreaming
you gave up


But they still gave you that ribbon,
Mom crows with pride
But what will you do
When the egrets don’t recognize
this man you’ve become?


My brass tines
Rake the surface in unison
Like this year’s goslings following
Along after their mother
Trailing triangles of swirling sunfish


But I know better
Than to look underwater
Where algae gather with pride
Like emerald scum
I am a sunfish, too
Thrown back after every catch


Where will you go,
your sword of lilacs
Splintering every rising sun
with a wink?


Now, stand tall by the gazebo in
Pekarna Park,
across from the ancestral log home.
Hold me close
Then tell me
what it is anymore
that we fight for


Oh soldier mine
Take this gun from me
Unload and
Make it safe


Only one thing I promise
is true:
That you can’t pass time
like the others do,
breathing through shadow gills,
Once you hear those brass tines
Strumming.

(Originally published in Outsider Writers, 2007)

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