drycrikjournal

First cup of coffee
and Nicorette gum rush
to startle the senses
still slumbering
in the shadows of dawn.

The slow retreat of dreams
replayed on hillsides,
circumstances stashed
among others
in the rocks and crevices,

deep within hidden canyons
worn by centuries of rain,
for safekeeping—
unforgiving places
you may not want to ride,

reserved spaces
collecting wild regrets
with reveries—
first drafts
of uncompleted poetry.

Night shrinks into shadows rising
to ridges trimmed in gold, the day
awakes with or without us.

An eagle retreats
a crow escaping
four and twenty blackbirds:

squadrons of fighter pilots
patrolling nests—like flycatchers
on the peck riding the shoulders

of hawks—a brutal business
in the air over eggs
and babies in pintails

needing to be fed
or be food for others—
trees full of gaping beaks,

all the helpless beginnings
awaiting their place by design
amid hostilities of spring

No evening news to discuss,
nothing to eclipse the day’s
smooth accomplishments:

the horse and cattle dance
across the road, the sort
and ricochet to load

fractious bull calves
for town—the seed is ripe
we are harvesting.

Market always up or down,
I remember my epiphany
at forty, dickering over price—

not trying to get rich,
but bank enough to stay
another round of seasons

looking for sign,
listening to voices
recorded on ridge tops,

all looking down canyon
through time      upon
this clod of ground.

© 2016 Neal Lett

 
The Sirens sing in each man’s odyssey,
in every woman’s role as Penelope,
faithful to themselves by all accounts:

old myths woven and those unwoven
memories spun yarn remembers
in the yet unfinished shrouds

in which we cloak ourselves, cast
into the present tense a tick-at-a-time.
No grace reliving past temptations

or heroics, those flashes dimming
with mundane routines of earthly
jobs, of quiet talk with our gods.